


With The Moon I Run

by rainylemons



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dreams, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-16
Updated: 2012-08-16
Packaged: 2017-11-12 07:04:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/488052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainylemons/pseuds/rainylemons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam wakes after Death puts his soul back into his body and suffers from an excess of dreams, both when he’s asleep and when he’s awake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With The Moon I Run

**Author's Note:**

  * For [De_Nugis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/De_Nugis/gifts).



Sam knows pain. It’s something he’s so well acquainted with that it’s become an entity all its own, another lover, a harsh one. When he wakes screaming and finds pain in every part of him, this doesn’t seem strange. But the desire to sleep, the exhaustion that goes deeper than his bones, that wells up from his soul, is new. He’s been tired before, but not like this. He thinks maybe he’s gone without sleep longer than Cartaphilus has walked the Earth. As his mouth thinks to yawn instead of scream, he wonders if Cartaphilus ever sleeps, wonders if he walks the dusty roads of the planet, awake and forever denied the sweetness of dreams. He wonders if they’ve walked together, cursed for different reasons and talked about the ease of rest that they’ve so long been denied.

Dean’s with him, hands gripping his arms and Sam would grab him back, hug him and hold on for as long as he could. But his wrists are bound, cold metal against his skin, and he’s so tired, so completely unable to keep his eyes open. He sees Dean and thinks there’s so much to tell him, but all he can do is yawn again and say “sorry Cartaphilus.” He closes his eyes, is aware that tears of relief are making them burn, but he doesn’t care. The blackness takes him and finally, finally Sam sleeps.

*

Dean’s cranky and at six, Sam’s old enough to know that a cranky Dean spells a bad day. He’d come downstairs, fussed from too much sleep and a little cranky himself because he’d been hungry and had to pee. He couldn’t find the bathroom because they’d gotten to Chloe’s so late and her house is just too big and confusing for him to figure out. Dean had been trying doors earlier. Sam had heard him opening and closing them, heard him interrupt Dad who had to have been working because he always yells at Sam when he gets into his things and figures that’s what must have earned Dean the terse “dammit, Dean! Just go find your brother!” Must have been because Dean had thrown a pillow at his head some time later and ordered him to get his butt to the kitchen if he expected to be fed that day.

So, Sammy had gone downstairs, tripping over the length of Dean’s sweatpants because he hadn’t found his own and holding them up with one hand as he looked for the bathroom. Any bathroom.

Dean’s slamming things down on the table. A bowl. A spoon. A gallon jug of milk and Sam thinks to ask why there’s a box of Raisin Bran on the table when he knows Dean hates it and doesn’t think much better of it himself. It’s not even the kind with any sugar on the raisins and that’s just got to be wrong, should probably illegal as far as Sam’s concerned.

Sam really doesn’t want to ask him where the bathroom is because Dean’s got that look that says “one wrong word and you’re in for the wedgie of your life,” but he doesn’t think he can really hold it much longer. He shifts, grabs himself to try to keep from peeing down his leg, and waggles his hips a little the age old ‘gotta go’ dance.

Dean just glares at him and lets out a sigh. “It’s in there,” he says pointing behind him. Sam glances to the room off the kitchen, sees a mudroom with their coats and boots and another little hallway. He looks at Dean uncertainly, wondering if this is going to end up like the time he’d tricked him into going into the girls bathroom at a Denny’s. He doesn’t want the girls room. Doesn’t want to risk going to the bathroom and Chloe coming in and grabbing him by the ear like the old lady who’d accosted him at Denny’s, calling him a naughty, naughty boy. He doesn’t really think Chloe’s an ear grabber, in fact he thinks she’s kind of out of this world and liked that she’d given him a room all to himself, even if he’d had to go find Dean’s room in the night and stand there, fidgeting, until Dean had scooted over to let him in bed. But, he’s learned a lot in six years and he knows that girls are territorial when it comes to the ladies room. He doesn’t really get it. He’d let a girl into the boys room if she had to go. Dad had told him to be good to his women, after all, though he had been kinda drunk when he’d said it.

Sam decides to risk it. He runs by Dean awkwardly with his knees kind of together while he tries to keep from peeing on himself. He’ll really get it if he takes a leak in Dean’s sweat pants, even if they are old and smell a lot like sweaty boy.

He runs by coats and shoes, his, Dad’s, Dean’s and a couple of Chloe’s things that range from expensive to grubby, and he thinks again that she’s pretty neat as he takes the hallway and finds a laundry room with a massive bathroom off to the side. Chloe’s a Lady, with a capital L. Dean told him so. Said she’s an heiress from Boston and that’s why her house is so big and why she has so many pretty clothes and awesome things. But she also works like Dad does, which is cool because it’s never previously occurred to Sam that rich people had to do anything but maybe dive into big piles of money like Scrooge McDuck. He figures that makes Chloe exceptional, which is what Sam’s teachers have been writing on his report cards since he can remember.

For an exceptional person and an heiress, Chloe’s bathroom kind of sucks. The shower’s big and open with a table in the middle that kind of looks like it’s waiting for a doctor and someone to operate on. The walls are dingy white with cabinets lining them, all of them locked. But, there’s the toilet next to the weird sink that’s so big Sam thinks he could probably sit in and that is, as Dean would say, all aces with him. He flips open the toilet lid and just barely has time to shove Dean’s sweatpants down before he’s peeing. It takes forever and is a huge feeling relief like it sometimes is. He makes sure not to miss, not to ‘paint the frickin’ bathroom.’

It’s hard to wash his hands in the sink. He’s kind of small for his age and it’s one big darn sink, but he can reach the handles of the faucet when he stands on his tip toes. Standing on tip toe has the unfortunate side effect of making his sweatpants fall off of his butt even though he’s got the string tied as tight as it’ll go and he nearly falls over as he tries to wash with the gritty, lye smelling soap and keep his pants up. It is, Sam figures, hard to be small.

Sam tries one of the cabinets after pulling up his pants and wiping his hands dry on them. It’s locked, though, when he listens, he thinks he can hear something thump and rattle. He puts his ear up close to it, startles when something kicks against the wood with what sounds like hooves. Sam backs away until he’s in the big, strange shower and it’s wet beneath his feet like someone’s hosed down the entire room the night before and the water’s not had time to dry completely just yet.

Bladder emptied, he forgoes the thought of breakfast – because if he holds out, he might just get something better than Raisin Bran out of the deal – and decides to explore. The cabinets in the shower are all locked, too, and it’s kind of strange to find so many cupboards in a shower. He figures that’s where Chloe must keep her towels and soap, figures she must have a fuck ton of it, as Dean says when Dad’s not around to hear him. What interests Sam the most, however, isn’t the metal table with its holes and strange drains, but the refrigerator. Now that does confuse him and he can’t think of anything that anybody would need in the bathroom that would require a fridge.

He goes to it, puts his palm on it, and feels the steady electrical hum. The hum changes to a whisper when he grabs hold of the handle, an old fashion kind that he has to lift up to open it. He thinks something inside is saying his name, long and low, over and over. _Saaammy. Saaammy. Saaammy_.

Sam shouldn’t open it, kind of doesn’t want to, but feels that sort of fluttering in his belly like a hundred butterflies all springing from the same flower at the same time. He works the latch, hears the slight hiss of escaping air, and pulls the door open.

Eyes stare at him behind plastic and Sam jumps, lets out a scream – the loud and long and please come help me, right now! kind – and he falls back onto his butt. He hears Dean holler for him, can hear the reassuring sound of his footfalls in the hall, but he doesn’t answer, can’t really do anything but stare at the thing in the fridge.

The head is wrapped in plastic, thick sheets of it that make the deer’s eyes seem wet and alive, like it could still blink at him. He sees no shelves, nothing but the head and its antlers taking up the whole space. There are seven points. Three on the right antler, four on the left, and something flutters beneath the milky plastic of the tallest tip. Something fine like silk just barely muddied with old blood and ash.

“Sam! Sammy!” Dean tears into the room and Sam’s so relieved to see him, so happy to find a reason to turn away from the decapitated head in Chloe’s refrigerator, that he doesn’t even give Dean the chance say anything before he’s got his arms wrapped around his middle, face pressed firmly into his shirt.

“What the hell, Sammy?” Dean says in that kind of frantic voice he gets when he thinks Sam’s hurt himself, which he hasn’t. Not really. He’d just been scared.

Sam doesn’t tear himself away from Dean, is happy to stay right where he is, thank you, but he does reach back and point behind him. He waits for Dean to sound a little bit as shocked and scared as he is, just a little, enough to tell Sam that his reaction is normal. Dean, of course, doesn’t sound scared at all, but he is older and, as he tells Sam at least every other day, much wiser.

Instead Dean lets out a low whistle and says “Oh, wow.” He tries to unwrap Sam’s arms from him and when he doesn’t let go, Dean pries him off forcibly. “Don’t be a baby, Sam. It’s just a dead deer.”

“It’s a head and it’s not dead, it’s not. It said my name.” Sam looks up at Dean, still managing to hold onto a fistful of his shirt. His brother rolls his eyes at him to tell him that he’s very stupid and, yes, still a baby and Sam feels a little sheepish, feels a little ashamed because he knows he’s a big boy these days. He rides the school bus when they’re in a town that has one, stays in school all day until three just like Dean, and can read better than any kid in his class. Or that was in his class. He supposes that they’re not in school again, at least not for a little while.

“It’s just a deer,” Dean says again in his older, wiser, big brother kind of voice. “C’mere and see. There’s nothing to be scared of.”

“Nuh,” Sam tells him and shakes his head.

“Baby,” Dean scolds and strides forth, utterly without fear, and reaches out a hand. The plastic crinkles and whispers beneath his touch and the deer rolls its eyes wildly and in fear. Its breath starts up again with a snort that fogs the inside of the wrapping and Sam can hear the grind of its teeth against each other.

 _Saaammy._ It looks right at him and Sam screams like the house is on fire.

Dean’s trying to calm him, trying to shush him, but he can’t. Sam keeps screaming until Dad’s there, Chloe, too. He’s held tight in his father’s arms for too short a time before being passed to Chloe who smells expensive and dirty all at once – perfume and sweat and something musky that Sam can’t even describe. Her coppery hair is soft against his cheek and she croons to him sweetly, shushing him even as she scolds Dad for yelling at Dean.

“It’s too big a house for children, John, and the boys can hardly be at fault. Blame me, if you have to raise your voice at someone.”

“Don’t worry, I’m blaming you plenty,” Dad growls. “But Dean’s been wandering two times too many today.”

“And that’s twice you’ve been thwarted and three times that you weren’t. I’d say you still came out on top,” Chloe replies, not even remotely meek in the face of Dad ‘s yelling, though it makes Sam cringe something awful. He takes a peek over at him, expects to see him irritated and pale and just tired, so tired, like he is most of the time.

He looks like he’s going to blow out a vein, as Dean sometimes says, but then he closes his eyes and shakes his head, something warm and pink rising from beneath his beard. “Terrible pun, Chloe.” And Sam’s kind of shocked because, aside from the yelling, which Sam figures they had coming, Dad looks like he’s in a good mood.

Chloe makes an amused little humming sound in her throat and waggles her finger at Dean. “Chocolate chip pancakes sound in order, don’t you think?” Dean doesn’t look like he thinks so, in fact he’s kind of glaring at Chloe like he wants to maybe spit on her satiny movie star nightgown, but he’s not dumb, not Dean. It’s a perfect opportunity to escape Dad’s wrath and he takes it, though he ignores her outstretched hand.

“Pancakes are good.”

Sam’s still in Chloe’s arms and he can feel the muscles in them, telling him that she might look like she belongs in an old movie, but that she’s strong like a boy. She holds him easily enough, no matter that he’s all of six years old and too big to be carried everywhere, least wise according to his father who, when they pass him, Sam’s kind of shocked to discover smells just like Chloe – perfume and sweat. Musk and sweetness and things he can’t really name at all.

*

Sam wakes to the smell of coffee. He cracks open an eye and finds a cup looming in his vision, steam rising off it. He smiles and shifts until he’s sitting up enough to take it from Dean who’s holding it out to him and looking fairly wrecked. 

“Dad and Chloe Tanner had a fling,” Sam says and he’s a little shocked by that because he’s pretty sure that he was about to tell Dean that he looks like hell and needs to sleep.

Dean blinks at him, eyes green and huge for a minute, but then smiles a little uncertainly and nods. “Old news, Sammy. What, uh, brought that on?”

“Dream,” Sam says and takes a sip of his coffee. It’s hot and he has to blow on it a little, but it’s been sweetened pretty liberally with the kind of shit Dean hates and Sam figures he must have gotten it just for him. “Good,” he says and takes a longer drink, reveling in the heat as it warms him. He’s cold he realizes and sort of fuzzy like he’s been sick, which he doesn’t really remember.

“What kind of dream?” Dean presses. That’s peculiar. Dean’s not much into dreams unless they’re the unnatural, prophetic sort or of the filthy variety.

“Um… the usual kind? Dreamt about the time we went to Chloe’s place and found that deer.”

Dean loosens up a little, stops holding himself rigid and alert and Sam wants to ask him just what the hell’s going on. He’s distracted by this thought because he himself doesn’t really know. He remembers Detroit. He remembers Cas working like a demon killing machine and filling jug after jug with blood, all for him. The taste of it in his throat, the tingle of power along his fingers, and then? Flashes. Dean. The car. Dean again and Sam telling him that he’s got it, that it’s going to be okay. He’s stricken by the memory of the fall and sits up fully with a gasp, the sense of the world falling away from him. The coffee sloshes, burns his leg through his jeans, and Dean’s there with a hand on his shoulder, supporting him or holding him down, Sam’s not sure which. The pained hesitation is back in his eyes and he looks traumatized, looks like he’s a couple feet from adopting a thousand yard stare.

“You okay?” Sam asks and hates that he can’t remember what happened. “It was just a dream, Dean. Swear. You know that thing freaked me out.”

Dean doesn’t say anything, just keeps his too tight grip on his shoulder and Sam thinks he looks like he’s going to break. He sets his coffee cup on top of a precarious stack of books next to Bobby’s couch – when had he gotten to the couch? When had they gotten to Bobby’s? He doesn’t know, and he can’t quite get around the gaping holes in his memory, but Dean looks bad, awful and freaked and like he’s on the brink of losing it and Sam remembers something vital. He’s missed him. There’s a black stretch of eternity that he can’t look into after the fall, but he feels like he hasn’t seen Dean in a thousand years, maybe two.

Sam can’t help it. It’s too natural with Dean looming over him, holding him by the shoulder. He reaches out and hugs him, grips him as tight as Dean’s holding him and he feels a regretful little drop in his gut when the response isn’t instant, but comes slow and hesitant.

“Sammy… is it you this time? All of you?”

He doesn’t know what that means, thinks he might be on the cusp of his own breakdown because he’s suddenly babbling against Dean’s neck, apologizing for everything under the sun and maybe sniffling a little like the waterworks are about to start up. Mostly he just keeps saying he’s missed him, over and over.

 “They tried to take you out of my head, but they couldn’t, they couldn’t, and I just kept missing you, man.” And what the hell does that even mean? Sam doesn’t know, hasn’t got a clue why he said it, and feels a hot burn of shame because, yes, he is crying, but something gives way in Dean and he’s got him. He’s holding him. He smells awful, like it’s been a day too many since he’s thought about a shower and there’s whisky clinging to him. Still, he’s a physical presence, no mere memory and Sam finds that having him there chases away the strange sense of having forgotten something.

“It’s okay, Sammy. It’s going to be just fine now.”

It doesn’t sound fine, it sounds like maybe Dean’s crying too and that’s not a natural occurrence. Sam pulls back to look at him and Dean ducks a little under his scrutiny, rubs at his eyes and fails utterly at looking all right. He looks, as Sam thought earlier, fucking wrecked.

“What happened?” Sam asks again. “I mean… I don’t… are you okay? I… holy shit, Lisa! Lisa’s okay, isn’t she? She and Ben? You went to see them, didn’t you? Are they… are they…”

“They’re fine, Sam,” Dean tells him. “God, it’s gotta be you, man. Only you could worry about everyone other than yourself and like all at the same time and shit. No,” he says when Sam shifts, when he’s about to ask, what he’s not exactly sure, but the words are forming when Dean shuts him down. “No. Everyone’s okay. Lisa’s pissed at me, Ben… shit,” and Sam doesn’t like the way Dean looks away from him then, doesn’t like how his gaze becomes shadowed and anguished. “Ben’s maybe a little scared of me, but they’re okay. They’re safe. C’mon, let’s eat.”

Sam shakes his head at the non sequitur and thinks maybe he might pull Dean back down, maybe make him elaborate a little on why Lisa’s kid would be scared of him and try to get him to fill in some of the holes in the Swiss cheese that he’s calling a brain right now. But, his stomach rumbles as if on cue and he is, he realizes, starved.

“Uh, how long have I been out?” he asks and stands, waving Dean off when he wobbles a little. He feels weak, but a practiced run of his fingers over his limbs reveals no obvious physical deficits.

“About a day,” Dean tells him and then looks at him a little expectantly.

Sam doesn’t have an answer for that look, can’t think beyond the grumbling void in his belly and the sudden pressure that tells him, yep, he’s been asleep for about that long and is just about ready to piss in his jeans. Dean laughs a little when he shifts, when he brings his legs together like a kid, and Sam flashes him a finger as he hurries by him, holding onto the walls here and there as he makes for the downstairs bathroom.

Dean’s waiting in the kitchen when Sam finishes, but there’s no bowl, no Raisin Bran like his muddied dreams of old memories. Instead he’s got toast going and slides him a cup across the counter filled with cheap instant oatmeal.

Sam inhales half of it before he even gets around to sitting at the table and when Dean hands him a plate of buttered toast, he attacks that too, along with the fresh cup of coffee waiting for him. Dean eats a little bit, just toast and coffee, and he’s adopted a slower, more refined pace. Doesn’t shovel the food in, doesn’t belch or grin like a starving man at a buffet like he used to do. He’s changed and though he looks like he’s gone without sleep for about as long as Sam must have been out, Sam’s not sure that it’s entirely bad. He seems patient, maybe a little reserved. He wonders if that’s due to Lisa and Ben, wonders how long Dean was with them and why he isn’t there now.

“You wanna fill me in here?” Sam asks when his brain finally kicks in and registers that he’s been fed. He takes the pot Dean’s left on the table and pours himself more coffee, though he forgoes the cream that he figures must be in the fridge.

“What do you remember?” Dean asks cautiously.

“I remember saying yes,” he replies and opens his mouth to say more, but finds that he’s yawning instead. Dean twitches a little, like he’s maybe warring with himself and Sam knows he’s got to give him more than that, knows that Dean’s asking what happened after he fell, even if he can’t remember, but he yawns again like the coffee he’s been chugging is full of sleeping drops. “Sorry. I’m just… Jesus, I feel like I haven’t slept in a year.”

Dean closes his eyes at that and Sam just stares, thinking it was a pretty innocuous statement. “Dean, what happened? Did I forget something? Did I… did I do something?”

“No, Sammy. You,” and he emphasizes the ‘you’ like it’s a vastly important distinction that’s just got to be made, “didn’t do a thing. Except not sleep, you’re right about that.”

“What the hell?” Sam asks, but Dean’s getting up. He gets an arm under him like he’s an invalid and, damn, but he does wobble again like he’s new in his skin and has to remember how arms and legs work, though he’d managed feeding himself well enough.

“I’m putting you back to bed,” Dean tells him and there’s not a lot of room for argument in his voice.

“But, I’m not…”

“Don’t even say you’re not tired, man. You’re just about asleep on your feet and have a lot to catch up on, I figure.”

“This sucks.” He doesn’t really mean to whine, but it seems to relax Dean and he cracks something close to a smile as he leads him through the kitchen to the couch that Sam suddenly finds strange to be there. There should be a bed, he thinks, the bed they’d rigged up for Bobby after he’d become wheelchair bound. The bed that all of them, Adam included, have slept on at one time or another. Sam draws up suddenly, panicked.

“Adam,” Sam says, a little urgently, a little fearfully.

Dean pushes him down onto the couch and waits for him to lie down. “I know.”

He takes the blanket folded up on the end of the couch and pulls it up over his shoulders, tucking him in like he’s still a little kid who can’t go to sleep without his big brother there, hip next to his. “But, he chose to burn the world and you chose to save it. He was lied to, maybe, confused and I don’t know. Maybe someday I’ll be forgiven, but I couldn’t leave you down there, Sam. You tried to stop it and I…God help me, you’re just more important to me.”

“He sleeps,” Sam yawns. “Michael protects him and he sleeps, but he wears Adam’s face. He wears his face, Dean, and it’s…” Something shifts in Sam’s head and it’s suddenly like he’s trying to pull the memory from behind a brick wall. “It’s awful,” he says. “The screaming…”

“Leave it alone, Sammy. I’m begging you, don’t think about it and just leave it alone.”

“The screaming never stops,” Sam breathes out. He loses the thread of what he’s saying almost instantly. “It’s nice being at Bobby’s. Think he’d mind?”

“No, man. Bobby doesn’t mind.”

There’s something strange about the way Dean’s phrased that, something that begs questions and maybe a little sliver of hope, but the world is steadily becoming indistinct and woolen. Sam feels as though he’s being wrapped in a cocoon made of exhaustion and warmth. He thinks maybe someone’s hand is in his hair, thinks it might be Dean’s and he turns towards it.

“But, I’m too tired to go to school, Dean.”

“No school today, Sammy. Just… go to sleep.”

*

Shadows run in the corner of Sam’s vision. He doesn’t turn to get a better look, doesn’t think he wants to, just wanders down the hall of Chalmers Junior High and thinks of how much he hates this school. He usually finds a friend or two in every school, but this place is small town hell, the kind where everybody has known everybody else since kindergarten and Sam’s made to know every day that he’s nothing but an unacceptable interloper.

He stops at his locker and turns the combination without pause. Seven, fourteen, twenty five. Inside it’s empty, save for a picture of a pit. Sam stares at it for a long while, feels something start to churn in his gut and he supposes that it’s some kind of message from the other kids at school, the ones that don’t want him there. He doesn’t know what it means, but doesn’t like looking at it, doesn’t like how it make something scream in his head or why he thinks he can hear Dean whisper, from very far away, “I’m begging you, don’t think about it.”

The shadows lope with him as he walks the school and now and then he can hear a snuffling sound, dogs with noses to the floor, maybe. He walks a little faster and turns into the science room. It’s A class, and there’s only twelve stools at the black counters. There aren’t a lot of kids at Chalmers, less in the advanced classes and Sam’s twice the outcast for making the grade before having ever arrived. He runs his fingers over the cold Bunsen burners and comes to stop before a dissection tray.

There’s a heart on it and something tells him that it’s his. Sam looks down, certain that he’s going to find his chest has been cleaved open, but there’s nothing untoward to be seen. When he puts his fingers to his neck, he feels the steady pulse at his jugular vein and can only wonder how that can be when his heart is there with pins and little flags sticking out of it. He studies the landmarks and doesn’t find anything indicating valves or chambers. Where he thinks he should see ‘sinoatrial node’ there is instead a flag labeled ‘Dean.’ And, yeah, maybe that makes a weird kind of sense. There’s a flag for Jessica, one for Mom and Dad, but most of the flags read ‘revenge’ and ‘rage’ and ‘payback.’ Still, the marker with Dean’s name is still the biggest, there’s a few that read hope and he thinks, just maybe, he’ll be okay.

Sam touches the marker with Dean’s name and puts his hand to his chest. It’s okay. Everything’s okay.

He leaves his heart where it has been laid out for study and edges carefully around the tables, hoping to evade the shadows that skate by, just out of sight.

The hallways of the school are still empty and, yeah, it’s Saturday. It makes perfect sense. No one’s going to be at school on a Saturday, not unless there’s a football game, which thankfully there isn’t. Sam doesn’t want to despise football because he likes it, especially those rare occasions when he, Dad, and Dean somehow find time to throw the ball around or watch a Jayhawks game like they’re still hometown Kansas boys. But, thing is, football makes him grumpy lately because he hadn’t made any sports teams at Chalmers, not a single one, even though Dean had turned down football, baseball, and said he might have tried out for track, but didn’t figure there was any point. Maybe they’d finish out the year here, maybe they wouldn’t, but Dean said he was happy running with Sam after school and that had been that.

Sam’s decent at running and he takes the halls at a quick, measured pace now because they seem unending today and he’s getting a little panicked at the thought that he’s not getting anywhere. He also runs to see if the shadows can keep up. They can and they do. He’s outpaced, waited on, and the things dart by so fast that he can’t help but turn his head to look. There’s nothing. Row upon row of blue lockers. Chalmers Cyclones posters here and there. D.A.R.E. and M.A.D.D. posters and one that reads I.K.W.J.D. where Sam stops. Stares for a moment at a poster of a man pointing at an empty cross and screaming, the bubble over his head reading “I know what Jesus did!” and he looks kind of pissed about it.

“Cartaphilus,” Sam says to the poster. “I can sleep now.” The black figure on the red paper turns to him and weeps inky tears.

Sam takes off down the hall again and it’s not like he’s running backwards on airport walkways any longer. He reaches the end and slams through the courtyard doors so hard that he falls down the steps. It stings. Both knees and his palms are scraped up terribly, blood welling up from a dozen little patches of worn through skin, and Sam wonders if he fell or if he’s just worn his body out, making it give way like his old jeans and rattiest pairs of socks.

He blows on the raw skin and sits up. The courtyard is black, bits of snow falling in clumps like ash and it’s cold enough that his breath comes out in a fog. Leaves blow along the cement, take to the air when the wind gets beneath them. It’s strange to see the blowing of leaves amidst the falling snow, but pretty. He looks up to see the sky, but can’t find it. There’s only snow and up and up, the ceiling of cloud raised so high that he can no longer see it. Sam wonders how long the snow’s been falling, how far it had to go before it reaches him to land on his nose it thick, fat and cold clumps.

The sky’s come down, he decides as he takes to his feet. The sky’s fallen, Chicken Little’s doing the “told you so, suckers!” dance, and the cold snow sticking to his eyelashes is what’s left of the stars. They gleam a little when he blinks and Sam thinks he’s going to miss seeing them in the sky.

He doesn’t want to be at school anymore. Saturday’s not a day for school, not even for a mega nerd like him. It’s a day for doing chores if Dad’s home and lounging around in underwear and t-shirts until noon in front of the TV if he isn’t. Sometimes there’s McDonald’s, most of the time there’s not, but Dean makes a mean toasted cheese and there might even be some of the good chips left, if he’s lucky. Food sounds good, but hanging around with Dean and fucking off, even though Dean’s like a caged animal some days, is better. They’ve been having good days lately. Dad’s been gone for a couple of weeks, the money hasn’t run out, and Sam knows Dean kind of digs being king of the house, well king of the shit motel and kitchenette anyway.

He crosses the courtyard, shadows keeping pace with him, and they’re starting to bother him a little bit. He thinks one of them might be the Devil because he thinks he kind of sees something that indicates horns or maybe just an innate wrongness that spells evil, but another shadow is the kind made by blinding light, even though it’s dark and there isn’t any. That one’s Michael, Sam knows, and for some reason, though he doesn’t think he knows a Michael, that’s much, much worse. Which, really, what could possibly be worse than the Devil?

Sam doesn’t want to find out, so he takes to running again, slips a little in the wet leaves and swirling snow, but reaches the door that leads to the lunch room slash assembly hall and knows that he’s not far from being out of the school. There’s another hallway along the lunch room, one that runs parallel to the band room and the gym, because, yeah, having those two things close together makes just perfect sense. 

He opens the doors to the lunch room and walks in, has to put his hand to his ears for a second because the music is too loud.

The bass reverberates in his chest and Sam knows that he’s made a giant mistake. He can’t dance, looks like a giant, gawky retard when he tries it and can’t think of why he’s let Brady talk him into this until he spies the reason he said yes – Jessica Moore.

She’s not a club girl either, not the sort that’s into the scene, the drinking, the bump and grind and hope for a hot screw against the bathroom wall, but she’s there and she’s unfuckingbelievably gorgeous. Jess is with a little group of her friends, wearing a tight white dress over legs that seem to go for miles and there’s nothing about her that doesn’t make his heart beat out of time or his dick go hard in his pants.

They’ve been flirting pretty heavily since Brady introduced them, been making eyes at each other, but he hasn’t had the nerve to ask her out and the one not-date she’d initiated had ended in what Sam figured was certain disaster. The kind that came with spilled drinks and awkward silences.

He’s doomed and though Brady’s shaking his head at him like he’s a dead man, Sam can’t stop himself. He goes to her. She’s the only person that stands out amidst the grinding shadows of faceless college students and he’s drawn to her utterly.

“Can you even dance?” she says when he stops in front of her and holds out his hand. Sam’s forced to shake his head and gestures to his body like “well, look at me.” Jessica’s answering look smolders, says that she’s looking plenty and likes what she sees.

Sam doesn’t resist when she takes his hand and doesn’t say anything when she glances over her shoulder and laughs at her girlfriends who are looking at her like she’s just decided to go off with a lion. Sam wishes he was lion, wishes he had that kind of grace and he knows he’s going to make a hopeless ass of himself.

He doesn’t even get the chance to ponder humiliation on a public scale because this, this isn’t dancing. It’s foreplay and he thinks maybe Dean’s told him something to that effect once when they were still speaking. Foreplay Sam can do. He doesn’t think about the fact that shadows are writhing around them or that everyone has to know that he’s hard in his pants, he doesn’t really think at all because Jess pulls his hands to her hips and looks at him a little coyly as she runs her palms over his chest and presses in so close that she’s all he can smell, all he can see.

She moves her hips, he moves with her, and he doesn’t think of dancing at all. Sam runs his hands over her hips bones, feels the firmness of her ass and she leans back in his arms, exposing the long, perfect length of her neck and the swell of her breasts just over the bodice of her tight little dress. Sam finds his breath is coming in harsh pants and, oh God, he wants her. He wants to put his lips to the steady pulse of her heartbeat in her neck and that perfect spot just at the base of her throat. She’s everything good that he’s ever wanted and she’s so beautiful that he can’t figure out how he’s even gotten here, how he’s gotten so damned lucky.

They’re moving through the shadows, practically fucking each other through their clothes, and he sees Brady look up from a demonic looking goth chick to give him the thumbs up. Sam ignores him, clutches Jessica’s ass and rocks against her. He licks his lips, thinks about kissing her, and doesn’t have to agonize over the decision. He can’t stop himself, not when she’s running her hands over every part of him and rocking against his groin like he’s the only thing she’s ever wanted in her life. He touches her lips with his, breaches them with his tongue, and tastes the sweetness of sugared cranberries and liquor. Jessica’s fingers twine in his hair and she pulls him down like he could possibly get any closer to her. She doesn’t stop the filthy, sultry sway of her hips when she kisses him.  Her tongue is wet, delicious heat against his and Sam molds himself to her, clutches her, ignorant and uncaring of the writhing shadow dancers around them.

“Let’s get out of here,” she says, pulling away just enough to whisper in his ear.

Sam nods, takes her hand, and lets her pull him down to the faded rug they decided earlier in the day to keep. It’s been vacuumed twice, but still smells musty when he lowers himself to his knees on it. Jessica shucks his old Jayhawks t-shirt she’d stolen out of his things in his dorm room and Sam helps her out of her sports bra. It’s damp, smells like sweat, bleach, and the cheap pine cleaner they used on the apartment all day, but he doesn’t care. He gets his own shirt off and lowers his head to her breast, takes the nipple between his teeth and flicks his tongue across it, earning a breathy groan from her.

He slides his hands over her ribs and the curve of her waist, sucks at her breast as she runs fingers feather light across his back, making him tingle and ache in his jeans. Sam finds the band of her shorts, gets his fingers beneath and pulls, taking her panties down with them. Jessica lifts her hips and he breaks away from her breast, leaving it slick with his spit. She doesn’t care, just kicks off her shorts and comes to her knees, presses against his chest and reaches up with her mouth, even as she goes much further south with her hands. Sam kisses her back, urgently, tastes the salt from the French fries they’d just shared not ten minutes before and groans into her mouth when her fingers start working at his jeans. She gets his fly open, gets her hands down in his underwear and strokes the length of him, thumb sliding over the head of his dick that’s already leaking and jerking a little bit beneath her touch.

He wants to do the same, wants to make her come undone with his hands alone and manages to just get his jeans over the aching hardness of his dick and his ass before he takes Jessica back down to the faded rug. Her legs are splayed gorgeously beneath him, flat belly rising and falling as her breath comes in little gasps, and Sam thinks he loves her, knows he loves this, and knows there’s no way in hell that he deserves it. His fingers trail through the damp curls at the core of her, slide through her wet heat and then inside.

Jessica bucks up against his hand, groans his name as she reaches for him and yanks his head up to hers. She kisses him like she’s made for it, whimpers as he fills her with his fingers, strokes and urges her on. His dick’s trapped somewhere between them, lost in a press of flesh and limbs, and he finds himself unconsciously working against her, a little desperate for friction because the sounds she’s making are undoing him. Moisture leaks over his fingers and he knows it’d be salty and exotic against his tongue. He can’t get the thought of out his head once it’s there. Sam pulls his hand away, intent on tasting her.

She doesn’t give him the chance. Her legs wrap around him the minute his hand isn’t trapped between them and she’s clutching his ass, guiding him to her. His body reacts without thought and Sam slides into her with a low, drawn out groan that maybe sounds a little like her name.

Shadows leap across the room as he thrusts into the wet heat of her and she brings her hips up to meet him. Thunder rolls, lightening follows, and the steady plink of rain he’s been hearing all this time and ignoring turns to a steady hiss.

“Do you love me?” she asks, breasts heaving against his chest as she pulls him deeper with each thrust, fingernails leaving burning marks across his shoulders and down his biceps. “Tell me you love me.”

Sam can’t say it, can’t do anything but fuck into her a little more savagely, driving her tiny frame down into the cheap motel mattress, and groan her name.“Ruby.”

Fucking her is a lot like working against a fiery pit of thorns and it hurts, fuck it hurts, but it’s delicious in its own wicked way, too. She’s soft in the right places, and wet, wet heat clutches him. He knows that the feeling of pain has nothing to do with his dick and everything to do with his heart and his soul, but he can’t stop, doesn’t really want to. She has the knife in her hands, the little silver one that only comes into play in bed, and before Sam knows it, she’s cut a line across the side of her neck, has turned her head. Blood, bright red, trickles onto the pillow. He lowers his mouth and lets the coppery, polluted taste of her wash over his tongue as he thrusts into her as hard as he can. Ruby takes it, seems to revel in it as she runs her hands over every part of him before settling into the damp hair at the base of his neck.

“Doesn’t matter,” she groans, “you’re mine anyway.”

Sam comes hard with the taste of her blood filling his mouth and sliding down his throat.

  
  
  
  
  
  
He’s disoriented when he wakes, doesn’t know where he is or what’s happening other than he’s shuddering, dick jerking and leaking in his pants. He feels the pressure of a hand against his forehead, it should be comforting, he thinks it’s meant to be, but it’s also holding him down and he knows that it’s not Dean. Sam fights it, grabs the wrist. He can’t move it and panic rises. He’s being held down, restrained, and he knows what comes after this – pain. Torment.

“Get off me. Get the fuck off me!” _Michael_ , he adds silently. _Get the fuck off me, Michael_. He knows there’s nowhere to run, nowhere but the terrible safety of Lucifer’s embrace who will hold him long enough to quiet him, protect him from Michael as long as it takes for the bright, burning light of his rage and righteousness to retreat and then…

And then. “Please,” he begs. “Please.”

“Be still. I am not going to hurt you, Sam.”

“Cas, let him go. Just back off!”

Dean. Dean’s voice and, there, one other. It's more quiet, something between a disapproving growl and a whisper, something drenched in time and restlessness and newly born feeling. Cas. Sam quiets, tries to calm his breathing until it’s no longer hitching in his chest like a train speeding down the rails.

“Castiel.”

“You don’t remember,” Cas tells him and Sam thinks, _the fuck I don’t!_ but memories of being held down are becoming fuzzy, indistinct. _Michael_ , some part of him insists, but Sam loses the ability to equate that name with anything other than the archangel who wanted one brother to serve as a vessel and had gotten another to agree.

“Remember what?” he asks. “I…son of a bitch. Cas!” Two things become evident to Sam simultaneously: his friend is alive and his friend is an angel who’s very nearly holding him while Sam’s sitting in jeans wet with come. He doesn’t know if he should be overjoyed or humiliated, thinks maybe he’s both at once.

Sam blinks to let his vision clear. Cas is there, up close and way too personal, which is about normal, and Dean’s standing on the periphery, tense like a big cat seconds from taking down a gazelle. Castiel doesn’t seem at all perturbed that he’s that gazelle. He ignores Dean in favor of resting his hand gently against Sam’s forehead once again.

“You have been dreaming.”

“You’re alive,” Sam says, ignoring the question. “I thought - I remember, Cas. You were just gone. And Bobby…Bobby?” he says, looking up at Dean, not quite daring to hope.

“In town,” Dean tells him, looking no less relaxed. “Chloe drove in from Denver after Bobby asked her about your dreaming problem. You know how she is with that kind of crap.”

Sam doesn’t think about what Dean’s said beyond the fact that Bobby’s alive or, strangely, meeting with Chloe who he’s just so recently dreamed of and who they haven’t seen since he was seventeen. Something’s been taken from him, something that’s left a vast pit of darkness inside of him that he just can’t quite look at or see through, but if he’s given his friends in return, he can’t question it, doesn’t believe that there are any consequences too big for their lives.

“Thank God,” Sam breathes and goes limp to find the hardness of the floor beneath him. He takes in his surroundings then, registers that Dean is much higher above him that he should be if he was standing over the couch, which he’s not.

The room is pristine, which in Bobby’s house says something. The bed’s a huge cherry number with a hand-carved headboard and a thick down comforter that’s so bright and clean looking that Sam might think it new were it not for the slight fraying around the edges. There are photos on the dresser, Bobby and his wife, both impossibly young and smiling, and next to the rocking chair by the window sits a basket of knitting, looking for all the world like someone’s just left it the night before. He’s in Bobby’s bedroom. Correction, he’s in Bobby and his wife’s bedroom, a place the man hasn’t slept in in years and likely won’t again unless he happens to find himself dying at home. Sam’s lying on the floor, wood polished and shining beneath him. He looks up at the bed again, a little fearful, and isn’t surprised to see the comforter rumpled and the pillows in slight disarray.

“Um, guys?”

“You have been dreaming,” Castiel says again and Sam gets that it’s not a question, but a statement of fact.

“In Bobby’s bed?” Sam asks, horrified.

“And in the kitchen, the tool shed, in the cars, out of the cars,” Dean runs a hand over his face. His eyes are bloodshot and Sam knows he hasn’t been sleeping. “You’re sleepwalking. Dreaming so hard I can’t wake you up and just keep following you around, trying to keep you out of trouble. Least I don’t have to worry about what you were dreaming when you were there,” he says pointing to the bed. “You just better be glad you hit the floor before you shot your wad or Bobby might actually be tempted to kill you.”

“Son of a… how long this time?” And when Dean just sighs, when he leans against the wall like he’s ready to fall down, Sam sits up and turns to Cas. “How long?”

“Two days,” Castiel tells him. “You seemed to be awake for some of it. Relieved yourself, ate what was put in front of you. I assume you remember none of that.”

“No.” Sam shakes his head. “None of it. Are you sure? Of course you are. Never mind.” He says when Castiel’s blue gaze becomes exponentially more exasperated and steely. “What the hell’s going on? I’m sleeping for days at a time and now I’m sleepwalking? What is this some kind of side effect from the…” He almost can’t say it. Can feel the yawning darkness inside of him when he even thinks of it and hears, just faintly, a faint scrabbling sound that reminds him of the tiny drop of stones from a high, rocky precipice. “From getting out?” Sam finishes quietly. “Is that what this is?”

Castiel makes one of his minute, but endlessly emotive expressions and shrugs. “Possibly, though more likely a result of the prolonged separation of your soul from your body and your mind. Your body and mind didn’t seem to require sleep for the year you were separate from it. I suspect…”

Dean and Sam swear at the same time. Sam in confusion, Dean in apparent anger and his constant, near desperate seeming worry. Sam struggles to his knees, feels the slickness of his ejaculate slip around in his pants obscenely. It only adds to his confusion.

“What the fuck does that mean? What…”

“No,” Dean interrupts, fierce and concerned. Absolute. “No. We’re not doing this. Sam, go take a shower.”

“Screw you, I’m not five anymore, Dean. You don’t have to get me bathed and fed and tucked into bed, here.”

“Yeah? It’s funny because I haven’t been doing anything but for the last few days, Sam. Now, come on. Please,” he adds, working Sam can tell, to try to hold it together and remain somewhat calm.

It’s hard to deny him when he looks like that and Sam gets to his feet, takes a few steps to door, but stops when he senses the fluid movement of Castiel rising from where he’s been kneeling.

“He needs to know.”

“See, I kind of think he doesn’t and I kind of think it’s not really any of your business.” Dean almost bites his tongue on the last of the sentence like he regrets the words coming out of his mouth the moment he says them, but he doesn’t back down.

“You asked me to come,” Castiel tells him. “And Sam is my friend. It makes it my business. You can’t keep him locked inside this house for the rest of his life and hope that he doesn’t remember. He’ll remember or someone will tell him. He needs to know.”

Sam feels like rabbit carcass being pulled between competing dogs. His sanity is stretching thin, reduced to straining and tearing muscle, blood and maybe, just maybe light is leaking through. Sam’s hair’s wet and he’s not sure that it’s sweat, not sure that it isn’t actually blood dribbling down from his scalp, from the point where his skin is giving way beneath the strain. He puts his hand to his head, wavers and feels Dean right up next to him, holding him steady and he doesn’t have to look to know that he’s glaring at Cas.

“See?” Dean says, one arm curling around him protectively and that’s a little strange, a little weird to think that he’d need to be protected from Cas. Once maybe, definitely deservedly, but not now.

“It’s the dreams, Dean,” Castiel says with the most irritated of his put upon sighs. “He is being overrun by them and will be stronger when they cease.”

“Then we’ll wait and see and maybe, maybe figure something out then.” Dean pulls on him and Sam goes with him for a step before raising his head and looking at them again, visions of shredded rabbits, shredded _Sams_ falling away.

“Do I get a say in this?”

“No,” Dean tells him, simultaneous to Castiel saying the opposite. Dean shoots Cas a look and pulls on Sam again, gently as if he’s a nothing more than blown glass. “No, what you get is to take a bath because you’re a freaking mess. Jizz drying in your pants, dust in your hair, look at you, Sammy.” Dean’s clucking a little at him like a hen, something he swears he absolutely does not do and has never done, but he is and it occurs to Sam that it reminds him of something. It reminds him of Dean and Mom in Heaven.

Sam ducks his head to hide the smile and the fact that he’s a little choked up while Dean brushes the top of his hair. True to his word, fluffy clumps of dirt and dust drift lazily to the floor. Sam laughs a little. “Man, I really have been sleepwalking. Where’d all that come from?”

“This room. The dust bunnies in here probably come with teeth.”

Sam digs in his feet and looks around him uncertainly, earning a gentle tug on his arm from Dean. “Dude, do I have to say it? Pants full of jizz. Angel,” Dean says pointing to Castiel. “Awkward. Even if Cas has proved to be a pervy bastard lately. Which… come to think of it, makes it more awkward.”

Sam doesn’t reply, isn’t sure that Dean would react well to the fact that he doesn’t see dust. Doesn’t see any reason for Dean to lead him around what seems to be a clear path. The room is spotless. Clean, well kept, and fresh smelling like Bobby’s cleaned it every day in honor of his late wife.

“How, uh, how long has it been since Bobby’s been up here?” Sam asks tentatively.

“Not since Karen’s died,” Dean tells him, referring to Bobby’s late wife. He brushes the air in front of him, moving, Sam thinks, invisible cobwebs out of his way. “Dad put some stuff up here for him years ago, but Bobby won’t set foot in it. Not even now. Which is why he’s likely to kick your ass if he finds out you were dry humping his wife’s bed. I think he’d probably take it as a real insult.”

Sam looks around, sees the sun shining through windows he remembers now to be boarded up. Sees nothing like dirt, clutter and boxes. It’s immaculate. He glances worriedly at Castiel as Dean leads him from the room. The angel regards him with blue-eyed solemnity and Sam knows Cas is aware of what it is that he sees.

*

Taking a bath with Dean sitting on the toilet, standing guard to make sure he doesn’t fall asleep and drown or start walking the halls naked, is, Sam thinks, more awkward than how he woke. The tub is at least long enough and deep enough that he doesn’t feel like he has to fold himself into thirds to get into it, though he does have to sit up and keep his knees a little bent. Dean had vetoed the shower, probably hadn’t been wrong to do it, and Sam tries to think of it as nothing new. Dean had given him baths when he’d been little, in fact some of Sam’s first memories are of that very thing and he’s sure that it’s probably not any stranger now. Probably.

Dean makes it a little easier for him, keeps him busy with mindless chatter about the car while Sam’s busy washing his junk, pointedly manages to pay special attention to his beer when the semen floats to the surface of the water and slowly disperses.

Now Sam’s scrubbing his toes, frankly ignorant and a little concerned where he’s gone in his bare feet to leave them so black with what looks like potting soil beneath his toenails. Castiel had helpfully found a brush to work the dirt out and, though it’s a long handled kitchen brush intended for Bobby’s dishes, it’s slowly getting the job done.

“So, wet dream?” Dean asks and Sam would probably get up and kick the crap out of him if he wasn’t already in about as compromised of a position as he could get.

“Really, Dean? Really?”

“I just need to know, Sam.” He sounds decidedly matter of fact about it, which is twice as confusing.

“Is this like when I was twelve and you wanted details on my wet dreams in case you had to have the big ‘Sam’s a Homosexual' chat with Dad?”

“No, it’s more like I just need to make sure you aren’t having the kind of dreams that will turn you into Sybil.”

Sam sighs, bends briefly over his knees, and glances at him. Dean’s still turning his beer around in his hands as if one more turn might unlock the secrets of the universe. “You gonna explain this, Dean? Any of it? Because I kind of feel like I’m standing on a ledge here.”

“You kind of are, Sam. Maybe not right on the edge, but yeah. I’m just trying to keep you away from it is all. I just… I don’t know how much to tell you and while you’re sleeping on your feet, I’m afraid to even try. So, yeah, Cas is right and you need to know, some of it, fuck maybe all of it, but not now.”

Sam doesn’t like the answer, but he thinks he can accept it for now. It still leaves him in the dark and now full of dread about what’s happening to him and, more importantly what has happened. He doesn’t fool himself, he knows it’s related to what happened after he fell and he’s starting to get the sense that things are lot stranger than he’d first imagined, a lot worse, even. He thinks he might be able to get a handle on it if he could at least figure out how long he’s been gone, but he hasn’t so much as checked his phone for clues or a calendar on it for the date. He trusts Dean, can’t do anything but. He’s been his big brother, his protector his entire life, and he stood toe to toe with the Devil when any sane person would have run. So, trust? Not the issue. Curiosity and concern, however is. But, if how he looks is any indication, Dean’s been killing himself to watch out for him and Sam’s not going to step on that. Not now. He’ll wait. He’ll find time to figure out the date, thinks maybe that might help him start to get a handle on things, but he’ll wait.  And, in the meantime, tell Dean his dreams, or, at least the PG version of them. 

Dean makes it easy for him. He doesn’t question, doesn’t judge, doesn’t mock. It’s the last that disturbs Sam the most. He glosses over the more pornographic sections of the dream, forgoes mentioning Ruby at all, and maybe that earns him a free pass on the judgment, but it doesn’t sit easy with Sam that Dean’s lost so much of his joviality. He just listens, asks questions like he’s working a case and Sam lets it be because, yeah, maybe in a way he is.

Sam manages to shoo him out of the bathroom when he’s ready to get out of the tub. Dean goes, just barely, but it’s not hard to hear him lingering outside of the door as if he’s afraid Sam’s going to fall in the tub. It’s a little smothering, but reassuring in its own way.

There’s clothes for him on the back of the bathroom door. Sweats and a t-shirt on the hook, socks and underwear on the doorknob. Sleeping clothes, he supposes. Sam puts them on for lack of options, but he’s starting to feel like he’s slept enough.

Dean’s not outside the bathroom when Sam opens the door. He tries not to think anything of it. He pads down the hall in his socks, doesn’t see anything to make him think he’s dreaming again. No following shadows, no strangely placed objects or dissected organs. No Jess. He feels a little pang at that, but continues down the stairs.

Bobby’s study is empty, the couch in the next room bare with the blankets Sam had slept under folded neatly over the arm. It’s a strangely domestic touch. They’ve always cleaned up after themselves at Bobby’s but Dean’s never been the tidiest sort. It gives Sam a strange, uneasy pang, one that makes him wonder how long Dean had been with Lisa. How long does it take to learn new habits? How much time had he spent with Jess before he started taking cream and sugar in his coffee? How many weeks until he automatically left room on the rod in the bathroom for her towel? How many days and weeks – months? – did it take until Dean didn’t just fold a blanket and toss it on the seat, but left it draped over the arm?

 It looks cozy. And that’s the problem. Sam doesn’t equate Dean with cozy and it makes him more aware of the length of time he’s missing.  

Sam shakes his head. “It’s just a blanket, Sam. Stop over analyzing.”

He finds Dean in the kitchen nursing another beer. It settles him somewhat as does the fact that Dean looks a little less shell shocked and exhausted. He’s still serious though, still looks contemplative and Sam supposes he can’t blame him.

“You gonna read me the riot act if I have a beer?” Sam asks him.

Dean grins a little bit. “Should I? Go ahead. There’s plenty in the cooler.”

Sam looks behind him, sees the cooler from the Impala sitting on the floor not two feet from the refrigerator. It’s a little strange and he finds that he has to pinch himself. Nothing changes with the sharp little twinge and Sam shrugs. He pulls a beer out of the cooler, wipes the condensation from the side and twists the cap off, lobbing it in the sink.

“So… now what? We just sit around and wait for me to fall asleep again?”

“We should probably cut the cake,” Dean replies, making Sam twitch a little bit because, cake?

He turns back to him and, sure enough, there’s a chocolate cake sitting in the middle of Bobby’s kitchen table. It’s a monstrous cake, three layers easy with enough frosting coating it that Sam’s teeth sort of ache at the thought of so much sugar. Dean looks at it in mild distaste, cake knife in one hand, beer in the other, and on his lap? Lilith.

Sam’s heart explodes up into his throat and starts hammering high and hard. There’s something not right about this, something that makes him think he should maybe pinch himself again or go smash his balls in one of the kitchen drawers to check that he’s really awake, but the thought becomes vague. Hard to grasp. He tries to hold onto it for a moment, chases it like a dog after a ball, but it gets away from him. All he can do is stare at the little girl on Dean’s lap. Bright ribbons in her hair, party dress faintly dotted here and there with what he thinks is something like high velocity blood spatter. She grins at Sam, cheerful and terrible, and then gives Dean a tight hug.

“Oh, I love you, Dean! Chocolate cake is my favorite!”

“Get away from him,” Sam says and grabs his beer by the neck, thinking he doesn’t know what. That he’ll hit her over the head with it? It won’t do any good. There’s only one thing that will do any good and Sam doesn’t have the strength for it. He doesn’t have enough demon blood coursing through his veins to do the job, but it doesn’t stop him from making the attempt.

Lilith twists around in Dean’s lap to scowl at Sam. She raises one tiny little eyebrow at him. “You’re not very fun. And you’re a little stupid.”

Sam holds out his hand, can’t figure why he does it, why he always has to reach out with his hand in some kind of jerky dark lord of the Sith gesture. He squeezes, feels his head start to throb like it’s going to explode. Lilith’s eyes flash white and she squirms on Dean’s lap.

“That’s not very nice,” she pouts at him. She shakes her head and frowns, her terrible little face contorting in pain, but she doesn’t budge.

“Sammy, it’s okay,” Dean tells him. “It’s time is all. Deal’s been made and payment is due.”

“It’s not okay!” Sam tries again, feels blood start to trickle and then gush from his nose.

“I just wanted cake,” Lilith says mournfully and then slides off Dean’s lap to stand next to his chair. “But, if you want to play, Sammy. I guess we can. We shouldn’t play inside. It’s bad and we could break something. We could put a crack in the wall, but… that sounds kind of fun!”

The wall? Sam twitches. _Do me a favor, don’t scratch at it._ The thought is important, huge even, but he can’t give it the consideration that it’s due because Lilith claps her hands in delight and makes a shooing gesture.

Sam goes flying, back across the kitchen and slamming into the cupboards over Bobby’s sink. His beer drops when he hits, glass and foam exploding on the old tile floor. He falls in the mess, cuts his hand terribly on the glass. It stings when the beer gets into the open wound. Sam lets the pain ground him. He doesn’t bother to stand, doesn’t think that Lilith is going to give him the chance, he just reaches out again and pulls, yanks on the demon in the little girl’s body.

She squawks, stomps her feet in a fussy tantrum even as her white eyes start to bulge in her head. Something makes her throat distend horribly, reminding Sam of a snake trying to get something large and warm and alive down its gullet. Lilith shakes her head again and swallows hard. The huge bulge in her throat slides down, pushes against the inside of her chest for a moment like she’s trying to sprout breasts on a little girl’s body. Then it’s gone.

She grins at him, white teeth stained with blood. “Too bad, so sad, Sammy doesn’t have the juice, and now he’s mad!” Lilith advances on him, chops the air with her hand. Sam’s flattened against the floor, head smashed once and then twice against the base of the cabinets.

She’s going to kill him. She’s going to beat him to a messy pulp and drag Dean over his body right into hell. He doesn’t think otherwise, doesn’t bother giving himself any false illusions. He’s not strong enough. He doesn’t have enough blood, hasn’t had any in he doesn’t know when. He’s going to lose and Dean’s going to pay for it.

Sam doesn’t think about anything else, doesn’t allow himself to contemplate the horror of the plan taking shape in his skull or how it’ll make Dean feel, he just goes with it. Lilith gets closer, stomps on him, one black Mary Jane driving down on his crotch. He grabs her leg when she moves to kick him again and pulls, upsetting her balance.

Lilith topples to the floor, half on top of him, and Sam feels a terrible, disgusted shock of revulsion when he yanks her towards him. She looks like a little girl and he has to tell himself over and over again that she’s not when he holds her down and slashes the broken beer bottle cruelly across the first available artery he can get to.

Sam clamps his mouth down over her wrist. Dean looks away. And Lilith, Lilith screams high and terrible, not like an outraged demon, but like a little girl who’s being attacked. He does his best to ignore it. She’s not a little girl. Not really and he knows that there might be a child locked away inside of her, remembers all of Bobby’s warnings about people trapped inside of their bodies while demons ride them. It gives him a sick, twisting feeling in his gut that he has to swallow down as he sucks as much blood from her tiny body as he can while she screams and screams.

“I want my mommy!” Lilith shrieks.

The blood courses down Sam’s throat and he shoves her away, breathing heavily. It’s enough. Lilith isn’t some B grade, red shirt demon. She’s strong. Powerful and it’s going to have to be enough. He reaches out again to pull the demon out of her, feels it start to come, feels something tear loose in his head so that the vision in his left eye goes red and then black, but he doesn’t stop. He can’t stop. She’ll take Dean away from him if he does.

She’s writhing on the floor. Blood and glass and beer beneath her as she kicks and seizes, black Mary Jane kicking.

“I’ve got you,” Sam tells her. He sits and rises to his knees. “I’ve got you now.”

Dean looks like he’s going to be sick, looks like he’s about to vomit his beer over the still pristine chocolate cake, but Sam doesn’t let himself be dissuaded. He can live with Dean’s disgust. Can live with him thinking he’s a monster so long as he’s alive.

Sam gets to his feet, standing over the demon jerking on the floor, ruined party dress riding high to reveal white cotton panties decorated with happy kittens chasing balls of string. He pulls the demon, watches her eyes flash white hot and he knows he’s going to do it. Knows that she’s going to die and that Dean’s going to be all right, they’re both going to be all right.

Smoke starts to leak from behind Lilith’s tightly closed eyes and he can see the flash of spark and fire outlining her small ribcage. Her body jerks off of the floor, classic frog on a hotplate maneuver, and he stands over her, gripping his fist tight as he tries to yank the demon free and kill it. Finally just kill it.

It’s starting to happen, Lilith’s tiny body is flailing and leaking hellfire at seams she didn’t previously have, when Sam feels a hand on his shoulder. He shrugs it off, or tries to, but the grip tightens, the hand  immovable. Iron over flesh. He turns, hopes to God that he won’t lose his grip on Lilith, and opens his mouth to tell Dean to back off, to just let him finish it.

Dean’s not there. Vibrant blue eyes stare into his and Sam knows a dizzying, world spinning moment of displacement. “Cas?”

“I need you to wake up now, Sam.”

Sam looks back to Lilith and his legs give way. She’s not there. The kitchen isn’t there. He’s standing in the middle of the salvage yard two feet from a blue tarp pulled over what looks to be an engine. There’s glass in his hair, thick bits of it like automotive glass.

Castiel bears him up before he drops to the ground and Sam leans on him heavily for a moment. He gasps for air like he’s been starved of it. He’s grateful that Cas doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t hold or coddle him, just keeps him steady on his feet while Sam tries to reorient himself to what he supposes must be reality.

Everything looks washed out when Sam manages to stand on his own. The sun seems weak, the colors around him – rust and yellowed grass, even the blue of the tarp – all seem washed out. Cas is the only very solid thing around him and he has to resist the urge to grab hold of him, to slip his hand in his like a child needing the contact of a parent.

“What the hell’s happening to me, Cas?”

The angel shrugs, a slight movement that just barely effects the line of his trench coat hanging off him. “You’re dreaming. Sometimes when you’re awake, sometimes when you sleep, but you’re just dreaming, Sam. I think it will be all right in time.”

“All right? How is this going to be all right and why? Why is it happening?” Sam asks him.

“Because,” Castiel replies slowly. He looks between the rows of broken down cars towards the house, studies it for a moment as if it can reveal to him what he should and shouldn’t say. “Because you’re sleep deprived.”

“I’ve done nothing but sleep for days!” Sam shrugs him off and heads to the house, stops when he reaches a Fiat on blocks. It’s a shocking lemon yellow where it’s not rusted through. Smoke rolls out of the windows and, when Sam looks, Andy’s inside, pulling avidly off of a long glass bong that’s the exact color of winter snowdrops.

“Sam! Need a hit?” Andy asks. “It’ll take the edge off.”

Castiel takes Sam by the elbow, looks into the Fiat, but doesn’t react to Andy at all. “Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that you’re dream deprived. So far your dreams have not been anything concerning, have not broached subjects best left alone. So, as I said, I think it will be all right in time.”

“But…” Sam gestures to the Fiat a little helplessly and Andy waves at Cas.

“There’s no one there, Sam,” Castiel says gently. Andy doesn’t look insulted by this or bothered. He shrugs at Sam with a ‘what’s he know’ kind of gesture and puts his lighter back to the bong, firing it up.

“Dean?” Sam asks. “He’s okay?”

“Inside and asleep. I... decided he was overwrought. He will not be pleased when he wakes up.”

“I need to see him,” Sam says, moving away to walk to Bobby’s house. The ground is cold beneath his feet and when he looks down, he sees that he’s only wearing his socks.

“Let me,” Castiel reproaches, glancing down at his feet as well. He takes him by the arm again and in the slightest fluttering of unseen wings, they’re standing in the house, next to the couch. It’s not empty, no blanket is thoughtfully draped over the side. Dean’s lying on prone on it, his head resting on his arm. Unlike Sam, he’s still wearing his shoes.

“He’s fine,” Castiel tells Sam. “Just sleeping.

Sam breathes a sigh of relief and brushes his hand over his face. Bits of glass drop from his hair. They make a tinkling sound when they drop to the floor. He relaxes, feels something crack in his back when he slumps and thinks he must have been dreaming very actively, but it’s fine. Dean’s fine. He looks back towards the kitchen as if to prove that to himself and sees Lilith leading Dean by the hand. She’s carrying a slice of cake on little plate. Dean walks with her placidly, looking terrified, but resigned. He’s holding a cluster of balloons in his hand. The colors on them are vivid – shocking red, green, blue, and yellow – and Sam knows it means something, is starting to understand that it’s the difference between something real and something from a dream, but Dean smiles at him sadly and follows Lilith.

“No!”

Sam lunges to follow, but Castiel’s grip remains firm on him. His arm is jerked terribly and his shoulder screams under protest. He knows he very nearly dislocated it by testing his force against that of Castiel, but Sam doesn’t care. Dean. Lilith is taking Dean.

“Let me go, Cas. Let me go!”

“You’re going to injure yourself,” Castiel tells him. “Dean was right about that. We’ll need to think of a better way.” He reaches two fingers towards his forehead. Sam tries to twist away, tries to lean out of his reach, but Cas has no difficulty pulling him in. He might as well be nothing more than a child. He taps Sam’s forehead and Sam waits for it. Waits to fall away into peaceful blackness.

It doesn’t happen. Castiel vanishes and the room suddenly seethes with color. The empty couch is the color of fresh arterial blood, the wooden floors gleam with castoff sunlight. The once faded wallpaper is so new, so rich that the gold in it gleams, almost to the point of blinding him.

Sam turns to the kitchen, sees one green balloon drifting lazily in the air, ribbons trailing from it like the tendrils of a jellyfish. “Dean!”

He runs to the kitchen, bats the balloon out of the way, and runs after Dean and Lilith. He stops at the door that leads down to Bobby’s basement, chest heaving a little. Steam rises up the stairs. It’s hot below, not just sweltering, but burning. The smell of sulfur and smoke and charred flesh rises up from below . Sam hesitates. Looks behind him and sees nothing. Just the one balloon bobbing gently.

He starts down the stairs into hell. It’s a very, very long descent and at the end of it, he finds nothing but blood and pain.

*

Sam holds still, breathing as evenly as he can through his teeth as Chloe dabs at the cut across his temple with a Q-Tip heavily greased with antibiotic ointment. The bleeding has stopped. From the look of his t-shirt, he must have bled for a long time. Sam tries not to give that any undue consideration. He knows head wounds bleed heavily with the slightest damage and he tells himself that’s all that it was, trusts that it must be so because Dean and Bobby aren’t insisting that he be taken into town to the hospital. No one’s screaming at him to get a CAT scan or an MRI. It must not be that bad. Chloe still decides that that gash is deep enough to warrant adhesive sutures, however, and Sam hisses again as she holds his flesh together and moves to tape the Steri-strips in place. Castiel halts her before she can apply them. Cas touches his head with his fingers and Sam feels a warm little tingle. Chloe’s mouth turns from an expression of displeasure to a round O of surprise and Sam figures that he must be whole again.

“Well,” Chloe breathes, “that must come in handy. I don’t suppose you can work any kind of plastic surgery miracles? I have a few things that have gone a bit further south than I’d like.”

“No,” Cas replies and backs away.

“Ah, well. Never hurts to try. You’re just as good as new then, Sam my darling. Though, no thanks to me,” she says, her voice still lightly laced with pure Bostonian aristocrat despite her many years away and traveling across the country.  

Sam smiles at her, wonders if she even hears the way she says it – dah-ling. It reminds him of being young and small, curled up on a couch that cost more than their car and eating popcorn with Dean from giant glass bowl while watching old black and white movies and ignoring the occasional way that her fingers would sometimes intertwine with his father’s.

“Thank you,” Sam tells them both.

Castiel nods at him, while Chloe smiles and kisses Sam’s forehead like she still sees him as that small boy. It dizzies Sam for a moment, makes him question if he’s awake or asleep and he has to force himself not to turn to Castiel for confirmation. He takes it a step at a time. Chloe’s perfume had always been some expensive blend of spring flowers and white musk, but when she leans over him now, he catches the acrid addition of something medicinal, something vaguely like peppermint. Arthritic cream, he thinks, looking at her swollen knuckles. He surely wouldn’t have woven that into a dream and he tells himself, perhaps too fervently, that this signifies he’s awake.

“Awake and not dreaming,” he adds quietly.

“Y’ain’t dreamin’, boy,” Bobby says gruffly. He looks at Sam in a way that’s too much a mixture of wariness and weary compassion for it to be comfortable, but he slides him a cup of steaming coffee, nearly tan with creamer. “It’s decaf,” Bobby adds when Chloe tuts at him. “Which I don’t keep in the house and had to buy special because someone insisted that you should stay off the sauce, as it were.”

Sam doesn’t really care. The mug is hot when he wraps his fingers around it and decaffeinated coffee still smells like coffee. It’s comforting and he spends a second or two being reassured by the scent until he’s aware of the scrutiny of the four people around him.

Chloe and Dean are sitting at the table with him, Chloe’s hand still on his knee like she has to mind him and Dean fidgeting with his own cup, not decaf and not alcohol free, if the smell is any indication. Bobby and Castiel stand over him, Bobby shifting now and then from one foot to the other while Castiel just… stares. It’s disconcerting and Sam nearly burns his throat as he takes a deep gulp of his coffee to provide himself with some distraction.

“Guys,” he says plaintively, “not helping with the staring.”

“Oh,” Chloe says with a frown, “I’m sorry, Sam. It’s just that you’ve been somewhere…”

“Asleep on your feet,” Dean interrupts, giving Chloe a slight shake of his head. “That’s all. Kinda weird, Sammy, you gotta admit.”

“I don’t remember,” Sam tells him quietly. “I’m guessing that’s what you’re worried about. What happened to me in the cage with Lucifer and M-Michael. You don’t have to have everyone tip toe on eggshells around me, Dean. I get it now and I don’t remember.”

Dean catches how he stumbles over Michael’s name and Sam has no way to reassure him. He doesn’t remember, not really. He’s just aware of a deep feeling of dread when he thinks of the cage, aware that sometimes he can hear a creaking in his mind like a gust of wind whistling around a wall that doesn’t have but a few cracks to admit its passage. Sometimes he wakes in a cold sweat, his dreams completely blank. Others he can speak of the archangels – Lucifer and Michael – and find that he wants to curl into as small a shape as his large body will allow without any reason behind it. He knows he was hurt, terribly by the way that Castiel sometimes regards him, but he can’t remember it. Something is holding it at bay and Sam’s starting to wonder if it’s the dreams themselves, starting to think that he’ll come unglued at the moment that they cease and all of his dreams are taken away from him once again. 

“Who’s worried about that?” Dean asks like he’s not just reflexively reached towards him, only to pull his hand back at the last second. “We’re just trying to figure out what to do with your freaky dreams, Sammy.”

“Let them come,” Castiel says, speaking for the first time since he’d woken Sam from his last dream, a terrible one of searching through hell to find Dean. Sam had fallen down the basement steps apparently, burned his hands on the water heater, gotten into God knows what before Castiel had found him and, much to Sam’s dismay, restrained him, holding him secure with his own body until the dream had gone and he’d woken, the whisper soft feeling of wings against his cheeks.

“S’cuse me?” Dean gives Castiel an incredulous look. “Awake or asleep, he’s been finding new ways to bang himself up for the last week and you think we should just let it continue?”

“I think he might have a…”

Chloe’s interrupted again as Castiel, this time cuts her off. Despite the five of them in the room, Sam somehow has a feeling that it’s just the three of them – him, Dean, and Cas. He discreetly pinches his thigh beneath the table, hard enough to make his eyes water. It hurts and nothing changes. Awake, he hopes, though this method has failed him in the recent past. Awake.

“Sam isn’t going to stop dreaming until he’s made up for the time he lost not dreaming here on earth and in the cage. There isn’t anything we can do to stop that and slowing it down will only prolong what’s happening to him. Am I wrong in assuming you’d like to return to a more normal state, Sam?”

He shakes his head. “No, you’re not wrong.”

“Then we don’t prolong it,” Castiel continues, staring Dean down as if the decision is all his to make. Sam figures he should be insulted, but he supposes that’s he’s not, supposes that he long ago gave Dean the right to speak for him when he’s unable to do so rationally.

“But, he keeps hurting himself, Cas. What happens if he seriously messes himself up and you’re not here?” Dean insists. “We could lock him up, cuff him down,” Sam shudders at this and Chloe reaches out to take his hand. “But, he’ll get out. Freakin’ Houdini, this one.”

“Then we need to find someplace a little less hazardous,” Bobby offers. “This place ain’t exactly meant for rehabbin’ someone so messed up. No offense, Sam.”

“It’s all right,” Sam tells him. “Um, maybe some place kind of out of the way?”

Bobby considers this and nods. “I gotta little place in Oregon. Up north. Pretty quiet, though there might be campers and hikers this time of the year.”

Dean shakes his head. “Dream boy lost in the woods. Bad idea.”

“We can go anywhere in the world,” Castiel says. “An Island in the Pacific, if you prefer.”

“Oh,” Chloe says. She takes her hand away from Sam’s and rubs at her knuckles. “I like the sound of that.”

“Ocean. Drowning,” Dean counters.

“My house in Boston?” Chloe says and then shakes her head at the same time Dean does.

“Death trap,” they agree simultaneously.

“Tibetan monasteries are very soothing,” Castiel offers.

“And very high!”

“Well, God dammit, Dean,” Bobby says, “what do you want, a padded cell? Everyplace is someplace he can get hurt.”

“Wow, no shit. Really?”

“Mind your tongue, boy.”

“Maybe some place in the country?” Sam asks, trying to diffuse the mounting tension. “Uh-farm or little house…”

“In the Big Woods?” Dean asks with a twist of his lips.

“On the Prairie, more like,” Chloe adds, equally amused, but a little more contemplative. “You know…hmmm. I had a farm…”

“In Africa?”

Sam looks up at Castiel. Dean, Chloe, and Bobby do the same.

The angel’s gaze shifts momentarily to the left and he purses his lips slightly. “Are we not still playing that game? I… like Meryl Streep,” he says somewhat defensively.

“You add Barbara Streisand to that list and I gotta whole commentary on living young and gay in America to lay on you,” Dean tells Cas. “God, we’re getting nowhere and we’re all so freakin’ loopy from lack of sleep or too much sleep to even be close to rational. Jesus, I did not need to know you sat through freaking ‘Out of Africa,’ Cas.” Dean rubs his eyes. “Chloe. Farm. Any heavy equipment? Hay bailers, combines, thrashers, shit like that?”

“It’s not my farm any longer,” Chloe replies. “But, I happen to know it’s unoccupied at the moment. The couple that bought it from me were having financial troubles and after a strange windfall they moved to a condo in Florida,” she says with a little satisfied smirk that suggests to Sam that she might have played fairy godmother. “They’ve put the house and the land up for sale, but there haven’t been any takers yet. I may buy it back.”

“And the equipment?” Dean presses.

“All of it went up for auction before they moved, livestock as well. But, they didn’t take much in the way of furniture with them to Florida, so we should have what we need to be comfortable – beds, tables, chairs, and the expected accoutrements. Better yet? You can see for miles. Especially,” she adds with a coy grin in Castiel’s direction, “if you have a handy member of the heavenly host around to watch over you.”

Sam has to hide a grin as Dean rolls his eyes at Chloe. His brother mutters something about the flirting ability of old ladies, earns himself a small smack as Chloe reaches around Sam to get at him. Dean rubs his arm like she actually wounded him, and though it’s possible given that she still has the feel of corded muscle in her arms, Sam doesn’t really think she did.

“Cas,” Dean says, “can you make the time?”

“No,” Castiel replies. “But, for the moment… I would rather be here. A regrettable decision, I’m sure.”

“Check it out,” Dean tells him, ordering him casually like everyone has an angel to do their bidding.

Chloe gives him the address, a place in southern Iowa, and is starting to give him directions as well when Castiel vanishes. She starts and looks around.

“My.”

Sam smiles at her. “You get used to it.”

“I’m not sure that you do,” she replies and then sits up again, wisps of gray and rust colored hair slipping out of the knot on the top of her head as Castiel flashes back into the room with a faint breeze.

“It’s safe,” Castiel says. “Remote and isolated. Cold, though. Sam will have to stay bundled up in case he wanders.”

“I’m not a child, Castiel,” Sam mumbles.

Castiel shrugs. “There’s a horse.”

Chloe leans closer to Sam. “Is it hard to tell if you’re dreaming or awake when he makes such non sequiturs?”

Sam nods. “Yeah, but you get used to that, too.”

*

Chloe hands Sam a pair of gloves. They’re old, well worn cracked leather, but the lining is still soft. Sam takes them and after a glance down at the stretched out heavy cable-knit sweater he’s wearing over two shirts, he puts them on.

“Everyone’s so sure I might wander off.”

“We’ll be taking shifts, but you’re a strapping big boy, Sam. Except for your angel and possibly Dean, it won’t be easy for us to restrain you. Here, I have a hat as well.”

It’s old too, smells vaguely of wood smoke and something ineffably like the countryside. Sam grins at the ear flaps. “I’m going to look like an idiot.”

“A warm idiot,” Chloe reassures him. “This will pass, Sam. I’ve seen it before. Nothing quite like what you’ve endured or with such… fervent dreaming, but I have seen it. A young husband brought me out to Vermont a year ago because he thought his wife was possessed. That must sound like a strange assumption, but he’d seen things as a child. As all of us have, I suppose. His wife had returned from overseas and was behaving strangely.”

“Was she military?”

Chloe nods. “And suffering from some post-traumatic stress from what she’d been through.”

“She was dreaming,” Sam said, fiddling with the flaps on the hat she’d given him.

“No, Sam. He was. She was… unwell when she came home. Erratic, you understand. Eric was afraid she was going to hurt herself and decided that he had to remain vigilant. Started to take anything he could to keep himself awake. But for an hour here and there, he managed it for almost three weeks. He started hallucinating, dreaming while he was awake. He was overwrought by the time he called me, convinced that demons were possessing his wife. It took days to get him to sleep again and when we did, well, it wasn’t unlike what you’ve been experiencing. It did stop. It just took time.”

“Not something every hunter would stick around for.”

“I’m not every hunter,” she reminds him. “There are a lot of ways to help people, Sam. I’m fortunate to have the means to explore options not available to most hunters. I can stay in places for months if need be and have the means to help people in different, perhaps more financially costly ways than other hunters. And since I try not to get involved with things that might cause the police to take an interest in my travelling, I sometimes stay and help with things that aren’t cases hunters need be concerned with. Not that I can’t light a wendigo on fire with the best of them, of course.”

“Now that I’d like to see.” He smiles at her, suddenly a bit shy and looks out the kitchen window. He can’t see Bobby and Dean, knows they’re in the barn trying to mind the stubborn, ancient horse that Bobby figured wandered off someone else’s land to find a place to die, but decided it wasn’t quite ready to go yet. He thinks he’s probably missing out. Dean’s likely swearing as creatively as possible and Bobby, Bobby Sam figures is no doubt ordering him around like a little kid and trying not to laugh at him. Castiel has been sent out for supplies and Sam thinks maybe the angel had said something about a little market in Greenwich Village that he favored. His life is sometimes so surreal that he doesn’t wonder he has trouble determining when he’s awake and when he’s dreaming.

“Are you still awake in there, Sam?”

“Yeah,” he replies. “Least I think so. I think… I think everything’s brighter when I’m dreaming. Everything seems flat now, washed out. So, maybe. I was just thinking that my life is pretty weird.”

“No arguments there, to be sure. You’ll be all right. You’re strong, you’ve got a good mind, and your brother loves you very much. It will get you through, I think.”

It’s good to hear someone say that Dean loves him, good to know that it’s evident to those around them and, though it makes him feel warm and safe to hear it, it also makes him flush. He can feel the heat creeping up his cheeks, knows Chloe can probably see it, and so he puts the hat on his head, pulling the earflaps down.

“Oh, very, very stylish.”

“I look stupid?”

“Yes,” she confirms. “But in a sweet sort of way. Dear boy, I have missed you and your brother very much. I’m a little sore that you didn’t take me up on my offer. You could have gone to Harvard and stayed in my house.  At least I’d have gotten to see you now and again, if not Dean and your father.”

“That’s just it. I wanted a break and there… well, Dad would have come. Dean, too, and, shit. It’s not like I didn’t want them. I just wanted out, I guess.”

“Most sane people do, but…”

“There isn’t any way out,” Sam sighs. “Not for us.”

“I suppose not,” Chloe replies. “Part obsession, part curse and a great deal of obligation. That’s the life we have. Only I’ve made it my own and done it on my terms. Someday? I suspect you and Dean can as well. I’d wished the same for your father, but… well. A more difficult, stubborn man I have yet to meet.”

“You and Dad…”

“Old business,” she says with a wave of her hand. “He’d lost a wife. I’d lost a husband and a daughter. We were comforting to each other for a time. But, your father was so driven and I was so much older. I’d already been down something like the road he was on and didn’t want to do it again. I didn’t mind, except for not getting to see you boys. It was delightful to have children in the house again, even if your brother loathed me for a good, long time.”

“He walked in on you and Dad.”

“And got quite the education, I assure you,” Chloe replies dryly.

Sam makes a face at her, one that sets her to laughing and he does the same, sits back and enjoys the feel of it, even if it’s something so long forgotten that it’s almost foreign. He stops when Jake sticks his head through the door to the kitchen. Jake is how he remembers him, still decked out in his combat fatigues, but he’s smiling and that Sam doesn’t remember.

“Sam, pizza’s here and Ava says she’s dealing you out if you don’t get your butt in gear. She’s already got everything I had on me. You going to help me win my watch back or what?”

Sam turns away from him. Does his best to act like he doesn’t see him. He focuses on Chloe instead, tries to memorize all of the new details in this woman that grew old in all the years that have passed since he’s last seen her. When she looks at him in askance, he nods, answering her unspoken question. Yes, the dreams have come.

She smiles at him, gently and with aching compassion. Chloe pats his hand. “Best to let it happen, Sam. It’ll be over more quickly that way.”

“I don’t like all of these dreams,” he tells her. “I just want to stay awake. Stay here with you and Dean and Bobby. Cas, too, if he ever gets back from shopping. Shopping. Jesus.” He rubs a hand across his face. “We send an angel grocery shopping. No wonder my dreams are so messed up.”

“Oh, Sam. Everyone’s dreams are a mess. Don’t be afraid. We’re all here to watch out for you.”

He reaches for her hand and she squeezes it, making the worn leather of the gloves he’s wearing creak slightly.

Sam gets up. He looks down at her while biting his lip, then follows where Jake had gone.

*

The elevator is glass with gray tiles and a gold railing. Sam puts his hand on it and stumbles when the elevator lurches. It’s not where he’s meant to be and he looks around wildly for Jake or Dean or someone that should be there, but the elevator lurches again and Sam knows it’s going to fall.

It starts to go and Sam feels his stomach drop as suddenly as the elevator does. Outside the glass he can see an open atrium speeding by as the elevator plummets down. He passes an American flag suspended from wire, can see plants and a fountain rushing up from below.

He doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know what position would protect him best when the elevator crashes to the ground. Wildly, Sam thinks of how he and Dean used to try to jump up at the last minute before an elevator stopped, how he’d been four and Dean eight and how they’d gone to a hospital because Dad had come home bloody. Pastor Jim had been with them and had laughed, telling them that gravity always has its way.

“Gravity always has its way,” Sam says in a panic. He knows jumping won’t help, knows he’ll still crash with all of the force of the elevator slamming into the ground no matter what he does and so he crouches next to the glass, gloved hands holding tight to the gleaming, almost blinding gold of the handrail as he tries not to scream.

He falls for a very long time, falls so long that he wonders if he isn’t an angel falling from heaven in an elevator and the thought makes laughter bubble up from his throat. It’s not the good kind of laughter. It sounds high and shrill and panicked in his ears. He wishes he could stop, wishes the elevator would just crash into the ground already because the stomach dropping sense of vertigo is making him dizzy.

Sam’s huddled beneath the hand rail with the door dings.

He looks at the doors stupidly, breath coming out in harsh gasps. They open, revealing rubble and destruction, but miraculously he’s survived the fall, doesn’t remember the fall.

Sam stands. His legs are like jelly and when he walks towards the open doors of the elevator, he wobbles, feeling like an old sailor trying to get his land legs back. It’s a hospital he finds when he steps through the doors. It’s empty, quiet like the event that’s brought the building down happened long ago. A stair case is ahead of him. It twists up three flights before stopping, the last step leading only to air and to a gray sky visible through the shattered ceiling.

Sam avoids the stairs and starts picking his way over the destruction. He has to climb over huge beams, cuts himself on thick cords of steel that jut out of them like arteries from a severed arm. There are no bodies, no people, but he passes signs of them. A hallway full of shoes placed just so as if there had been people running in them, but are no more. Here and there carts full of linens and medical supplies in dusty plastic wrappings are overturned. Once an artificial leg in a sneaker next to a tripod cane, but no sign of the one legged person who had used them.

Lights blink here and there, trusty old fluorescents that have yet to give it up even though they hang from the ceiling, their long tubes reaching down towards the floor and sometimes sparking. Sam makes his way between them, bending low to avoid the crackling wires. The light pulses in the flickering glow from the bulbs, washes the ruined hall with a dreamy quality that he doesn’t like at all.

When he spies the door, a bent rectangle of metal rimmed with the brightness of what can only be sunlight, Sam nearly runs for it. He trips before he can gain any speed and hisses as his palms burn with fresh abrasions. He wipes them on the palm of his jeans, thinks he had gloves, thinks he must have had gloves and is ready to go back and look for them in a panic until he realizes that they’re stuffed into the pocket of his jeans.

Chloe said he was to keep warm, Cas told him to stay bundled up and though those admonishments seem like they come from another lifetime, he still dutifully stuffs his hands back into the worn leather. He bends his hands, makes fists, and winces when the cuts on his palms burn.

He takes the last bit of the hall carefully after that, denies himself the luxury of running towards the open air and sunlight. It takes too long, the hallway seems to grow and he has a dizzying second of Déjà vu when he thinks that it’s like walking backwards on an airport walkway. 

The sun is bright when he finally gets outside, but it’s not as much of a relief as he’d hoped. The world is in ruin and choked with thick greenery as if it’s an age after the apocalypse. Trees have pushed through the broken concrete, vines, some of them as thick as his forearm, creep up the walls of that rise over collapsed roofs and huge blocks of stone.

There’s no birdsong, no crickets or sounds of life as Sam walks into the courtyard and he’s almost ready to laugh again, almost ready to give into hysteria and just start screaming ‘hello!’ at the top of his lungs like some kind of fictional astronaut playing Robinson Carusoe on an alien world.

He’s stopped by a hand on his arm.

“Now’s not the time for second thoughts, Sam.”

He looks down and Ruby’s there, her small hand on his arm possessively and she looks up at him with an expression that’s somehow fierce and gentle, loving and greedy all at once. His dick twitches once in his pants as if happy to see its old playmate and Sam thinks he tastes copper and sulfur tinged bile in the back of his throat.

“No. I…”

“Don’t chicken out now. Lilith’s there,” she says pointing to the abandoned convent that somehow rises whole and perfect among the greenery. It’s old, boarded up in places, but untouched by the rabid overgrowth that seems to have eaten the world. “You’re almost there and you can stop it, Sam. Stop her from breaking any more seals and save the world. Don’t you want that? Don’t you want a little payback for what she did to Dean?”

“I do. I do, it’s just that…just… Dean thinks, Dean said…Jesus.” Sam rubs at his eyes, finds that he’s confused when he feels leather across his face, and blows out a shaking sigh. “Give me a minute,” he tells her and she looks like she’s going to stop him until he reaches for his cell phone. Ruby nods and lets Sam move away.

Sam’s phone is blinking, telling him that he has a message. He wonders if it’s from Dean, wonders what he might say and thinks it won’t be anything good. Not with how they’ve left things. He doesn’t think he wants to hear it, doesn’t think his heart can take Dean telling him that he’s a monster, that he isn’t worth what he’s been through in hell for him, and he very nearly shoves the cell phone back into his pocket, ready to just trust Ruby and try to save the world even though every last nerve he has is screaming, telling him to stop, telling him that he’s wrong.

The phone rings, the obnoxious factory tone building up from the tiny speaker. His hands are shaking, he almost drops it, but he manages to answer it. “Dean?”

“Been callin’ you, boy. Take it you didn’t hear me?”

“Bobby?” Sam almost falls to his knees. “Bobby, I don’t…everything’s so confusing. The buildings are wrecked and Ruby’s here, she tells me that I can still save the world if I kill Lilith but it looks like it’s gone, Bobby. Everything looks like it’s just broken and gone and I don’t know what’s happening.”

“Take it easy, Sam. I need you to calm down and have a look around for me. Can you do that?”

Sam nods. “Sure, Bobby. I can do that.”

He does and Ruby’s there, impatiently tapping her foot and pointing to the trunk of the car to remind him that there’s a demon that needs killing, but he turns away from her to scan the rest of the area. A light comes on in the church, it’s a weak glow, barely more than a flickering illumination and Sam thinks someone’s lit a candle, perhaps a few. It’s not reassuring, so he keeps looking.

“What am I looking for?”

“Me, ya idjit,” Bobby replies with no little amount of frustration.

Sam shakes his head and keeps looking, but there’s nothing. He’s ready to tell Bobby so, ready to tell him that he doesn’t see anyone but Ruby standing next to an ugly orange car in the wrecked remains of the world, when the shadows between the thick vines across from him move. He stares at them and when the shape becomes a man, when he can make out a ball cap and a slow, cautious stride, Sam runs to it.

“Bobby!”

“Whoa, easy there, kid. You’re too big and I’m too damned old for you to swing me around like I’m your date to a square dance.” Bobby thumps him on the back despite his admonishment that Sam’s put a little too much verve into his hug. “Figured you gotta be hungry by now. Dean’s got a stew on and Cas bought some kinda herb bread in a deli that might just make you cry it’s so good, though it scares me seein’ the two of them all chummy and domestic like. Figure that brother of yours must be missin’ his woman more than he lets on. You want to cheer him up and sit down to a meal?”

Sam’s mouth waters at the thought and he lets Bobby lead him towards the rusted out white pickup that’s sitting, rather incongruously, in the middle of a field. He can’t see the house from where he’s at, can’t see anything but fallow snow covered fields and miles of fence line.

“Uh… how the hell did I get all the way out here?”

“Boy, anyone ever tell you that you run like the God damned wind? It’s lucky for you this old truck’s used to driving over this shit. Though if we get stuck? I’m makin’ you push.”

Sam climbs into the cab and puts his hands over the vents which are blowing out blissfully warm air. Bobby puts the truck into gear and they head back mostly along the same two tracks cut earlier by the truck in the snow.

“Bobby?”

“Yeah, kid?”

“That was pretty smart, calling me on the phone to help me wake up and all.”

“Do me a favor, will you? Remember that you told me I was smart the next time you and your brother blow off some very valuable advice I’m imparting.”

Sam smiles and leans back against his seat. “Sure, Bobby. And…thanks.”

“Anytime, Sam. Anytime.”

The pickup bounces and creaks terribly as they drive through the field. Sam doesn’t mind. The movement is too rough to let him sleep and since he has a difficult time determining the difference between waking and sleeping, he’s glad of it.

Bobby drives them through an open gate and onto a road. Sam looks behind them, wondering if they should get out and shut the gate again, but they don’t stop and he figures that they must still be on the land belonging to the abandoned farm. Without livestock to wander free, there’s no point in closing it.

They reach the road and though the truck still bounces with every frozen dip in the packed dirt and gravel, the going is smoother. Sam feels himself start to drift and he pinches his thigh cruelly, earning a sideways glance from Bobby. He shrugs back at the man and turns to watch the countryside roll by outside his frost covered window.

Jess runs alongside the truck until the road levels out and Bobby speeds up. She’s wearing a pale blue sundress and Sam thinks her bare feet must be freezing even though he can only see green, summer grass beneath them as she runs. He thinks there should be snow, thinks it’s strange not to see it, and he glances over at Bobby, mouth open to ask him.

“All right, Sam?”

“I don’t think so,” Sam replies and turns back to watch Jessica. The truck speeds up and they leave her behind along with the summer. She’s backlit by the sun when she holds up a hand to wave at him. Sam aches from leaving her, from missing her so terribly, and so he turns in his seat to wave through the back glass at her, even though Bobby gives him another one of those sideways moments of scrutiny that makes Sam squirm.

“Leavin’ someone?”

“Jess,” Sam whispers. “We left Jess.”

“It’s all right. She’s happier where she is,” Bobby tells him.

Sam closes his eyes, thinks of her in the warm sun and nods. He’s right. She would be happier.

They drive back into winter and the farmhouse comes into sight once more.

“I thought I saw Jake, too,” Sam tells him as Bobby rolls the truck to a stop. “I went after him, but… I guess I got lost.”

“Probably for the best. Can’t say as he was one of your better acquaintances, Sam. Sure he’ll show up, though. Way your head works, you probably aren’t lucky enough to avoid it. C’mon. Let’s get inside where it’s warm and get some food in you.”

Sam’s stomach rumbles in agreement with this idea and he gets out eagerly. Dean meets them at the door, wiping his hands on an old tea towel embroidered with hummingbirds and lilies. Sam thinks it’s another strangely domestic look, but Dean looks too worried for it to be a dream.

Sam gives him a nudge with his shoulder as he passes him on the step. “Bobby tells me you’ve been possessed by the spirit of Rachael Ray.”

Dean scowls. “She’s not dead, but any more wisecracks and you will be before you get to eat anything I made.”

“Stew?”

“Yeah.”

“Thank God,” Sam tells him, sniffing the air appreciatively. “I’m starved and you always did make a killer stew.”

“Man food,” Dean tells him. “I excel at man food. You…you know, all right? Having any freaky dreams right now?”

“Yeah, I’m having one where you’re wringing your hands on a tea towel like an old woman.”

“Jesus. You’re fine,” Dean says rolling his eyes. “Go wash up, sasquatch. You reek.”

“I need some socks and clothes,” Sam replies.

Dean nods and gives him a shove towards the long hall with the small downstairs bathroom at the end. “I’ll get you some, but leave the socks off until I check your feet out.”

When Sam looks at him in confusion, Dean gives him another, much gentler shove. “Frostbite, Sam. I need to check for frostbite. You’ve been outside most of the day and I think it’s ten below hell freezing over outside. Bobby says you haven’t gotten wet or done anything too stupid, but I’ll feel better if I check.”

“Nervous, old hen…”

“Nervous old hen’s gonna kick you in the ass…”

“All right. All right, I’m going,” Sam tells him and realizes that he’s smiling. It feels good and before Dean can object, Sam reaches over to give him a quick hug. “Thanks.”

He hurries down the hall, Dean muttering “you big damned girl” after him. He finds the bathroom where he expects. Other than finding the flamingo shower curtain completely tacky and a little disturbing, he finds nothing untoward inside. The water’s just water when he turns it on. There’s no one hiding in the tub, no strange sounds from the cabinets. No reek of sulfur from the tap.

Sam strips eagerly and gets into the shower, hissing slightly because, while he doesn’t think he’s frostbitten at all, he’s still cold enough that the hot water stings his cold skin. The showerhead is, typically, far too short and Sam has to alternate between the usual half backbend and ducking like he’s waiting for the sky to fall in to wash his hair. The water’s too warm, too relaxing for him to care, and he stays in the tiny shower until it starts to cool.

He finds clothes on the toilet as promised. No sleeping clothes, but more of the heavy layers he’s been wearing for most of the day – or maybe it’s been days now. He struggles to get the long johns on over his quickly dried skin, but manages it. It takes him a few minutes to layer up in the two long sleeve t-shirt and the huge, yellow and black sweatshirt that declares him a proud Hawkeyes fan – which makes him sneer a little because he’s watched too many Jayhawks games to be anything other than a Kansas boy at heart. By the time he’s done, he feels like he’s wearing the entire contents of somebody’s closet and isn’t sure that he has full range of motion.

Dean demands to see his feet once he’s seated in the kitchen. Sam sits down on one of the chairs and sticks his left foot out for Dean take hold of while already tearing into the warm bread that Cas sets down in front of him. Bobby’s right, it’s good, but he’s too hungry to slow down and appreciate the flavor. He switches feet, putting his right foot up in Dean’s lap for him to check over. Dean doesn’t take the job lightly and only gives it up when Chloe finally reminds him that this is the dinner table.

“You’re fine,” Dean tells him. “Put your socks and shoes back on.”

“But,” Sam says waving to the steaming stew that Cas is ladling into his bowl.

“But you could wander off at the drop of the hat and it’s damn hard to wrestle you to the ground, let alone try to get boots on and tied. You can bring them to the table. Yes,” he says when Chloe opens her mouth to protest, “he can. It’s not like he’s going to put his shoes in the food.”

Dinner proceeds in much the same fashion, Dean and Chloe needling each other back and forth without any real malice, just as something to pass the time. Sam thinks that bitching at each other is what keeps them from fussing over him until they’re all a nervous wreck, so he doesn’t pay it any mind, even if it is like watching two cats sharpen their claws on each other. Bobby doesn’t seem to mind them either, he jumps in from time to time, taking whichever side suits him. Castiel watches with interest, head moving from side to side like he’s watching a tennis match. The food and the company warms Sam up the rest of the way. This, he realizes, is family. This is what Sunday dinner might have been like if he’d had any kind of normal childhood at all.

He’s full and lazy, happy with the thoughts of family and that’s what undoes him. Sam isn’t surprised when he sees his mother standing over Dean, beaming down at him like he’s the most wonderful thing in the world.

“That was delicious, Dean. I can’t for the life of me figure out why some smart girl hasn’t snatched you up yet.”

“Mom,” Dean says, ducking his head. “Cut it out.”

“Too grown up to let everyone know what a mama’s boy you are?” She smiles at him when she says it and Dean shakes his head. “Good. Then there’s pie. Everyone want some?”

Dean, Castiel, Chloe, and Bobby all nod and his mother gets out four plates. She doesn’t cut a piece of pie for Sam, nor does she acknowledge him. It makes him hang his head, but it’s how things are, he knows. Still, he doesn’t have to stay around and have the knife twisted any.

He backs away from the table, feeling like an intruder suddenly. Dean looks up. “No pie?”

“I…”

“I will watch him,” Castiel says and stands as well.

Sam doesn’t wait to see if he’ll follow, just gets up and heads for the door. He finds his gloves and his stupid looking hat on a small table. He grabs them and is slipping them on as he walks outside. It seems like wasted effort because it’s not cold, despite the snow covering the ground beneath the indigo and vermillion winter sky.

The sun’s nearly gone, but Sam can see well enough. He cuts a path through the snow, walks towards the barn and nearly runs into a little girl in a white and pink polka-dotted dress. He very nearly grabs her by the throat, certain that it’s Lilith, but halts when she sticks her tongue out at him.

“I saw you and Jessica kissing,” she tells him. “K-i-s-s-i-n-g, gross! I’m telling Mom!”

“Brat!” Jessica’s suddenly there and she slides an arm through his. “That’s my cousin Wendy. She’s hell on wheels and lives to tattle on people. So expect her to go run and tell Aunt Georgia who’s going to tell Mom who’s going to tell Dad and, hey, how are you with the ‘what are your intentions with my daughter’ conversation anyway?”

Sam isn’t sure, is momentarily overwhelmed and shakes his head. He’s just about to back away, to make some excuse to Jessica, but then he remembers the window shopping he’d done earlier in the week and the modest sum of cash he’d started to stash away. It’ll take him time to buy the ring, but he’s not worried about Jessica’s dad. Parents always love him.

“Pretty good. Though, you’d better kiss me now so that your Dad doesn’t have to see me grab your ass at the picnic table.”

Jessica grins at him. Her light blonde hair is nearly scarlet in the setting sun and she’s so beautiful that it makes him ache. “Grab my ass anyway,” she says standing on her tip toes, “he’ll never know.”

Sam enfolds her in his arms and bends his head down to her. She’s not shy, not even with the threat of family and he groans as her tongue darts into his mouth. “Jess…”

“Mean, I know,” she tells him, breathing heavily against his lips. “Good thing you love me.”

He rests his forehead against hers and relishes the feel of her in his arms. “A lot. I love you a lot.”

“Then do me a favor and stay away from the deviled eggs?” She teases. “I’m the one that has to ride home in the car with you.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he tells her with a grin. “And I’m going to eat five. No,” he says when she swats at him in protest, “ten! Maybe the whole plate and some potato salad, too.”

Jessica groans. “I knew I should have gone out with that preppy little bastard Don. I bet he never farts around his girlfriend.”

“That’s because his ass is clenched too tight,” Sam replies. “I think I still have his number in my phone. I could call him up and see if he’s interested. Maybe you could get him on the hook before I start fumigating the general vicinity.” He gets out his phone and starts to pull up his contact list as Jessica bats at him, laughing.

“Don’t you dare! I can’t go out with him, I don’t own a single sweater vest!”

“C’mon, you’re throwing away a lifetime fart free here, Jess.”

“Sam!”

He waggles his phone at her. “Tell me you love my ass.”

“I do love your ass,” she says and drags him along towards the picnic table. “It happens to be an exceptional ass, but what comes out of it is straight from hell. Put the phone away… Sam, are you dialing? Holy shit, you’re dialing!”

Sam holds the phone to her ear as she turns scarlet. She bites her lip as it stops ringing, face twisted up in embarrassment. She scowls at him as she listens to the voice on the other end of the phone. “Time and temp. Oh, you think you’re so cute.”

“I’m not?”

She slips her arm through his again and leans into him. “Yeah, you are, for a giant dork. Giant, hot dork,” she amends. “Giant, hot, scary smart dork. I…crap. You’re perfect, you know that?”

Sam kisses the top of her head. “Not as perfect as you. And I swear I won’t eat a single deviled egg.”

“Reason number seven why I love you – you’re so sweet.”

“Remind me to go through reasons one through five later tonight, okay?”

“That’s a date, Sam Winchester,” Jessica replies. She takes him to the picnic table and sits him down in front of a citronella candle in cheerful yellow bucket.

The candle’s flame flares brightly and everything goes dark for a moment. Sam’s sitting alone at the empty table and it’s cold, bitter. No one is left around him, but for Jess with her hand on his shoulder. He turns to her and finds Lucifer staring down at him in Nick’s ruined body.

“What? No!” Sam makes to get up and run, but Lucifer pushes him down.

“Relax, it’s just me. Just Nick,” he clarifies and takes a seat next to him on the wooden bench. “Sam. Sam, Sam, Sam. You don’t look so good.”

“I haven’t been sleeping well,” Sam says lamely and can’t stop staring at Nick’s tired, blue eyes.

“Yeah, been there,” Nick tells him. “You and I have a lot in common. We shared something that only one other person in the world’s ever been through and, well, she’s probably out there, too. Wandering around in the night just like we are.”

“Who?” Sam asks warily.

“Lilith. Oh, not _that_ Lilith,” Nick tells him with a wave of his leprous looking hand. “The first one. The only human that’s ever willingly walked out of the garden and Adam’s runaway bride. She was Lucifer’s first vessel. She’s… what did Jess call her cousin? Hell on wheels. Yeah, that’s Lilith. Lucifer’s eye traveled far and wide looking for her when he was inside of me. I suppose he had bigger things in mind when he was walking around in your shoes though, huh?”

“Nick,” Sam says and finds he has to scoot away because the man smells like rotten meat. He swallows down the urge to vomit and forces himself to look the man in the eye. “Why are you here?”

“Because, Sam, I need you and your brother to get on the stick, here.”

“With…”

“Babies. You and your brother need to get cozy with some women and start making babies, Sam.”

“I don’t…what the hell for?” Sam asks.

“Because, the line needs to continue,” Nick tells him and leans in closer. “Keep the blood moving down through time until you and Dean get to be born again and can get the apocalypse back on track. Heaven and hell have been busy laying down new seals and all that’s left is for you and Dean to get on the job and start having some kids. It’s not so bad,” Nick says. “Kids… kids are great, Sam. There isn’t anything you wouldn’t do for them. Look what I did for mine.” He gestures to his blistering face with one ruined hand.

“No,” Sam tells him and when Nick reaches for him, he gets up from the table. “I’ll castrate myself first.”

“Sam…”

“I said no!” he turns and runs, spies the barn and heads for it.

Behind him, Nick calls out. “Lucifer’s seen it, Sam. You’re your own great, great grandfather! You’ll be born again and end up standing right where you were a year ago, saying yes to him.”

“Never again,” Sam says running to the barn. “Never, never again.”

He yanks open the smaller door inset into the larger sliding one and slams it shut behind him. It’s marginally warmer inside and a dull yellow bulb glows over head. Sam leans against the door and breathes heavily. “Never again,” he pants.

A horse whickers at him.

Sam opens his eyes, sick to death of dreaming and tells the horse so when he spies it standing in an open stall, surrounded by straw. The horse is old, possibly old enough to serve as Death’s steed if the bastard really did ride in on a pale horse, and its hip bones jut out from its ancient backside. It looks at him with interested if rheumy eyes and whickers again.

Sam goes to it and holds out a hand. The horse snuffles against his palm and manages a look of disgust when he has nothing tasty. It lips his skin anyway before going down to its knees with weary, tired grunt. Sam goes with it, feeling just as old, just as exhausted.

He leans against the old animal’s side and breathes in the warm, good smell of horse. It doesn’t object when he knots his fingers up in its yellowed mane and sobs against its neck. “I can’t let it happen again. Not to me… not to some kid. I swear, I swear I’ll just get cut. Swear I’ll kill myself and never… never have a family or a wife. No kids. No home. Just… no. I can’t. I can’t go through it again.”

The horse cranes its head and whickers softly again. Sam clutches its mane. “Why does this keep happening to me? Why can’t I get away from it?”

The animal has no answers for him, nothing to offer but its warm hide. Sam takes what he can get and leans against it, sobbing forlornly like a lost child until he feels a hand against his neck.

“Easy.” Castiel. Sam thinks he could be talking to him or to the horse, thinks it’s more likely to be him because the animal barely pays Cas any mind as the angel kneels next to them both.

“Come inside, Sam.”

“Is it true?” Sam asks him as he looks up. He can feel tears running down his cheeks.

Cas tightens the hand on his neck. “It’s true that any child born of your bloodline, yours and Dean’s both, could physically serve as Lucifer’s vessel, but Sam… but Heaven does not dictate what soul descends to earth to be born. Only God does and I cannot believe He would be so cruel. Not to you, who have done so well.”

“But, what if? Oh, fuck, Cas, what if?”

“Then I will be there from the moment you and your brother draw your first breath,” Castiel assures him, “and I will watch over you both. Protect you and keep you far from Heaven and Hell’s machinations. If my Father will not watch over you and Dean, then I will. I promise.”

Sam clutches his hand and tries to control his broken sobbing. It doesn’t go well, not for several long moments, but Castiel waits with him, calm and patient as only being of his many long years can be. Sam manages to get hold of himself and wipes the tears and snot from his face.

“Are you ready to go inside? Dean has left a packet of hot chocolate out for you, if you like.”

“Yes,” Sam tells him. “That sounds, that sounds really good.”

He lets the angel pull him to his feet and Sam goes with him, stopping only to look back when the horse whickers at him in farewell. “Can I ask you something, Cas?”

“Of course.”

“Is, uh, is there really a horse here or am I still dreaming?”

Castiel smiles at him. “Yes, Sam, there really is a horse. A very, very tired one whose time has come to rest. We should leave it be.”

“Will it be all right?”

“It will be fine. In a very short time, it will be young and hale again, running as fast as it can for a girl it knew a long time ago. It was happy then and it will be again.”

“Horse heaven?” Sam asks.

Castiel nods. “Something like that.”

Sam walks with Castiel out of the barn, finding it not at all strange that the angel keeps a hand on the small of his back. There’s nothing possessive or strange about it, it’s just Cas’s way of keeping track of him and Sam finds he doesn’t mind.

They walk through the darkened winter landscape, their shoes crunching in the hard packed snow. Sam doesn’t look at the picnic table as they pass it, doesn’t stop to see if there’s still a candle burning steadily in a cheerful, yellow bucket.

He goes straight to the house and, when Castiel opens the door for him, Sam walks gratefully through and finds that he’s followed Jake after all.

The house in Cold Oak isn’t much different than Sam remembers. There’s more candles and someone’s found an old oil lamp. The light makes the worn, splintery wood of the room seem less abandoned and when he pulls out the chair that’s vacant at the table, there’s a faded cushion. He sits on it, coughing a little bit at the dust that kicks up.

Lily’s dealing and her hands are gloved like his. She shuffles with them easily enough and starts passing out cards. Ava purses her lips, trying to seem cautious and cool as she sorts her cards, but Sam can see the gleam in her eye. Jake is next to him on his left and he eyes Ava warily.

“I’m getting my watch back.”

“Yeah, whatever, buddy. Six months here and I haven’t lost a card game yet. You’ll be handing over your underwear before you know it.”

“Strip poker? Aw, man, I’m not even wearing any underwear.” Andy’s rolling a joint, an obscenely fat one that’s roughly the size of a tampon and one that Cheech and Chong might be proud of. He licks the seam and reaches into the kitty for his lighter.

The pile in the table is a mishmash. Sticks, packets of salt, a pair of earrings, wrapped toothpicks, a gas station receipt, Andy’s lighter, a rusted knife. Sam feels a terrible pain in his back as he stares at the knife and darts a look at Jake.

“You playing or what?” Jake asks him.

Sam looks at his cards. All of them are blank. Creased and worn, but no numbers, no hearts or aces or spades. No face cards. He looks around at the others. Ava takes a card. Andy takes two. Lily stands pat and Jake does as well. Sam falters, glances at his blank cards, and takes five. They’re blank as well.

They start anteing up and the kitty pile gets stranger. Ava puts in a blood soaked diamond ring Sam knows to be in his possession somewhere. Andy drops the lighter back in.

“Don’t make me break the salt line, pot head,” Ava says, scowling.

“That wasn’t my wager. I was just putting it back!”

“Yeah, and I’m real interested in that bridge you have for sale too. Ante up, chump,” she demands.

“What’s your special power again? Super bitch?”

“You better believe it.”

Andy reaches into his pocket and curls his hands around what he’s holding protectively, a little forlornly. He looks at his cards again, beams with all of the subtly of a kid in a candy store, and then opens his hand. A tiny mouse the size of a fifty cent piece looks up at him in utter, woeful betrayal and then scampers from his palm to the pile on the table. It noses the dull blade of the knife before starting to lick the blood from Ava’s ring delicately.

They aren’t going in any sort of order, Sam realizes. Lily’s dealt randomly, they’ve taken cards and bid just as randomly, and after Lily adds a Polaroid of herself and another girl both holding skies and waving from the top of a ski lift, Jake tosses in seven used bullets. Bits of gore, brain matter Sam thinks, still sticks to the most deformed of them.

He’s the only one left and they’re waiting on him.

It’s hard to feel in his pockets with his gloves, but he still finds them bare. He thinks about putting in the gloves or the hat, but remembers someone long ago telling him that he’d have to bundle up. It’s a strange memory because he’s not cold, the old house is nearly stifling, but he leaves his gloves on and the hat as well. Sam bites his lip and is just about ready to say that he doesn’t have anything left when he spies a bit of folded red paper sticking out of his boot.

He lays his cards in what would normally be a face down position, but the cards are blank and all that he hides from the other players is their emptiness. Sam reaches down to his boot and pulls the paper, unfolding it.

Cartaphilus stands weeping before an empty cross.  _No one’s letting me sleep and I haven’t dreamed in centuries. You don’t know how lucky you are._ Sam reads the caption twice and feels a strange twisting in his belly that might be fear, might be relief. He lets the creased poster fall into the kitty.

Shadows rear as the paper drops into the pile. The light loses its hold and for a moment everything dims terribly. The salt lines at the window begin to shift, grains of it falling on the floor with a sound that should be too low to hear, but isn’t. It’s the hiss of sand in hourglass.

Time’s up.

Everything goes black and the wind comes. Sam can feel the salt now, has to squint as it gets into his eyes. He stands up, reaches out to grab hold of someone and feels the point of a blade against his spine. He knows what’s coming and so he runs.

He’s navigating blindly. There are walls and doors, once the feel of a warm body pressing next to his and breath hot in his ear. “Let it come. Just let it come.”

Sam leans into the embrace, doesn’t know who is holding him, but he clutches them back. Feels the whisper of fabric brush against his knees and then pulls away. He reaches out, feels a strong jaw, dry lips.

“I’m trying,” he says and then starts to try to find his way out of the darkness.

The wind is cold, bitter even and laced with the scent of burning, the hot stench of ozone and scorched flesh. In the distance he can hear screams and Sam thinks he has to find whoever it is, has to help them because they sound like they’re in so much pain.

He only knows that he’s outside because he stops running into walls and fumbling impotently at doorknobs. It’s colder now, the wind no longer hindered by whatever building he’s just quit. Sam pulls at his ears, feels a hat and flaps covering them. He yanks the hat down more securely and sets off into the nothingness towards the sound of screaming. From very far away, he thinks he can hear Dean calling for him. Sam doesn’t turn around, can’t because he can’t tell from which direction it is that Dean’s voice is coming from or if there’s anything like direction at all. The only thing he’s certain of is the sound of screaming and he runs for it.

There’s no ground beneath his feet, no sense of anything around him at all, just a wide expanse of endless blackness. Far in the distance he can see searchlights and he knows the angels are looking for him. He should find the road, he thinks. Should find the path that he once thought took him away from Dean, but now knows always leads to him, always leads him home. But the screaming is so high and so terrible. Sam sees for a moment a faint thrumming of light in the distance, a barely illuminated path that will take him to Dean, but the sound of anguish isn’t along that path. He doesn’t want it to be and is irrationally struck with the sense that walking the road home will only bring the pain back to Dean, back on Dean, and that makes bile rise sharply in his throat.

Sam turns away from the path of comfort, turns away from the promise of love and home, and heads to where there is no path, no light. Someone is calling for him, begging him, and he can’t just leave them to suffer.

In the blackness, light comes and it goes. Stars appear overhead only to plummet. There is no ground and so Sam watches them fall below him before winking out. The stars all seem to whisper “forgive me, Father” as they pass. The screaming becomes raw pleading as if the sound is being torn from someone’s throat.

_Please help me! Oh, God, please!_

_Would you do it again?_

_Yes! I’m sorry. No! No more! Please, no more!_

Sam’s weeping as it takes shape before him. There is very little light, just flashes of it high overhead preceding each rumbling yell. Thunder and lightning crash from behind a barrier and he has to walk for what feels like miles before he can see it. He is awed and terrified.

It’s a wall. So high, so vast that were it not for the flashing of light far, far overhead, Sam doesn’t think he would be able to see the top of it. The screaming and the yelling comes from behind it. The voice that’s yelling is outraged, self-righteous and not the least little bit kind. The sound of it makes Sam want to slink away and hide himself. He very nearly lets go of his bladder, very nearly wets himself as he stands before this giant thing that he can’t make sense of.

Then, from far away, he can feel it. It’s hate and it’s rage, but it’s also resigned. Sad and forlorn and hollow as if all of the hope in the world has gone through this thing, all of the love and the beauty, but now it’s empty. Aching.

_Sam._

“Lucifer.”

_You’re stronger than I was. That makes me proud, Sam. But, disappointed, too._

“Will you protect me from him?”

_Michael? Maybe. But, Sam, who will protect you from me?_

“The wall will,” Sam says, though he can’t understand why he says it or how such a thing could be or how it could ever help him. He just knows that it will. The wall will protect him from Lucifer and Michael and he reaches out his hand. Puts it against the shuddering, breathing stone.

“Don’t look at it, Sammy.”

Sam pulls his hand back, feels the wall rebound slightly as if begging him for another touch, and looks around him. Sees nothing but quivering stone and darkness. “Dean?”

“Don’t look at it. Don’t even think about it. Come away, Sammy. Come away.”

“Dean.”

He’s being held again and he’s cold, so cold, but Dean’s there, warm and solid and holding on to him with the ferocity of a mother holding onto her child in a tempest. Sam still can’t see, but he registers that this is because he has his eyes squeezed tightly shut. He can feel Dean, can feel the slight way he rocks him. He’s awake, he realizes, and almost throws up at the realization.

“I’m cold,” he says, face pressed against Dean’s shirt.

“No friggin’ wonder. C’mon, kiddo, let’s get you up.” Dean stands and pulls on him.

Sam stands willingly and rubs his hands together. He’s lost his gloves. “I feel like all anyone does is take me back to the house.”

“Yeah, well, you’ve been in and out of it so much that it’s a wonder that the fucking hinges haven’t come off the door, Sam. Guess we shoulda sided with Chloe and let Cas take us to the beach, huh?”

“Beach sounds good,” Sam agrees. “Shit, Dean, I’m so tired.”

“I know, Sam. Maybe if we’re lucky, you’ll get some regular sleep.”

Sam’s at the front door, again, and he eyes it warily as Dean holds it open for him. “You going in or what?”

“It’s just… every time I go through a door or leave a room, everything changes. And I’m sick of it. I don’t want to dream any more. Don’t want things to keep switching up on me. I just want things to stay like they’re supposed to be and for Chloe’s old farmhouse to be inside.”

Dean nudges him in the back and propels him forward. “Pouting won’t change anything if it’s going to happen and I’m freaking cold, man. Get in there.”

Sam goes and finds nothing off. He scouts around the living room, tromping his feet on the braided rug to get the snow off. No one waits for him and it’s just the farmhouse. Quiet and peaceful. “Where’s everyone else?” He turns and expects Dean not to be there when he does it. He’s relieved to find him locking the front door.

“Bed. Well, except for Cas. He had another heavenly emergency and had to buzz off for a bit. He’ll come back soon to check on you. If we’re lucky, we can convince him to do some more shopping. Domestic angels freaking rock, Sam.”

Sam laughs weakly at him and turns, looking around. “Uh, guess this is probably a stupid question, but do I have a bedroom?”

“Considering you haven’t slept in your bed once in five days, it’s not so stupid. Come on, you and I are down here. It’s the only bed long enough to keep your feet from hanging off the end.”

“We’re sharing?”

“Easier to keep track of you that way,” Dean tells him and pushes him towards the downstairs bedroom.

Sam finds their things inside, his duffle and Dean’s, both of them unzipped with clothes spilling out. He doesn’t bother tidying up, just tries to toe off his boots. They’re laced too tightly and frozen and he has to sit on the side of the bed and work at the laces with numb fingers.

Dean squats down in front of him and takes over. It’s like being a kid again and Sam surrenders to it completely. Lets Dean get his boots off and strip him down to one shirt and his long underwear. He’s under the covers, a thick pile of old quilts, before he knows it and he has to blink at Dean who sits down on the edge of the bed next to him.

“What if you’re not there when I wake up?”

“I’ll be here.”

“What if I don’t see you?”

“Then I’ll smack you around some,” Dean tells him. “Go to sleep, Sam. You’re exhausted. Surely…  Jesus, surely by now it’s got to be about done. Not even your big, fucked up brain could possibly have any more dreams to cook up for a while.”

“I hope so,” Sam tells him. “Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think if the dreams stop that I’ll remember? That I’ll… lose it?”

“No.” Dean leans over him and puts a hand on his forehead. “Not happening, Sammy.”

“Dean?”

“Christ, Sam. What?”

“How do you know?”

Dean bites his lip and looks away. “You saw it, right? In your last dream, before I woke you up, you saw the wall?”

“Yes,” Sam whispers and then shudders. “It’s real?”

“It’s real,” Dean tells him. “Well, not real real, but there. In your head to keep the memory of what happened to you far enough away that it can’t hurt you.”

“How did you know what I was dreaming? How did you know it was there?”

Dean sounds pained when he answers. “Because you were screaming at it, Sam. And because…because I put it there.”

“Thank you,” Sam says and he means it.

Dean pats his arm and looks down at him again. He looks tired. He looks like he’s been awake as long as Sam has and like he hasn’t rested well in months. “You may not thank me for it one day,” he says quietly. “Though I hope to God you do. Get some rest, Sammy. You’re wrecked.”

“You’ll be here?”

Dean grimaces at him and gets up so that he can walk around to the other side of the bed. He kicks off his shoes and gets under the covers. “Man, haven’t you figured it out yet? I’m not going anywhere.”

“Me either,” Sam yawns and curls up on his side when Dean turns out the light. “At least I hope not.”

Dean’s breathing doesn’t even out or change and Sam knows his lying awake, watching over him. It makes him feel safe enough that he can close his eyes. He fights sleep for a little bit, but his body is done, is too exhausted to keep it up for long. He gives up and relaxes, lets himself drift off with Dean close by.

When Sam sleeps, it’s finally peaceful and free of dreams.  



End file.
